Today I sent out Christmas cards.<\/p>\n
This may not seem like a big thing to you, but to me it is monumental. There was a time in my life where I was the Queen of Christmas \u2013 where I had my Christmas letter written, printed, folded and sent by the day after Thanksgiving. My house used to be decorated from top to bottom \u2013 from Christmas bedspread and shower curtain, to everyday Christmas dishes and wall hangings and a light up Christmas village on the top of the piano. Every room in my house reflected holiday goodwill \u2013 and even though I was in an unhappy marriage \u2013 I found happiness in the lights and music of the season.<\/p>\n
2 years ago, when I broke up with my long term boyfriend, I couldn\u2019t even fathom decorating for Christmas. But a dear friend promised to help, and with a tank full of gas and some fresh deposited debit cards, we went on a shopping spree to deck the halls. She and her husband hung lights on the front of the house, she superglued and pasted and primped and prodded until my house reflected the good cheer my heart wasn\u2019t quite ready to embrace yet.<\/p>\n
Last year, I thought I was ready to reclaim Christmas for myself. I went so far as to write the Christmas letter and ask my friends and relatives for their updated addresses, but then it all fell apart. The lovely decorations my friend had bought the year before stayed in their carefully packed crates. I tried to get motivated, but I wasn\u2019t there yet. I did get out there \u2013 my friends invited me to participate in their festivities and I gladly went along and enjoyed the good cheer with them. I even bought a small Christmas tree finally and presents for friends. <\/p>\n
This year has been different. You won\u2019t find a Christmas bedspread or shower curtain in my house, but the Christmas spirit started in my heart earlier. SH and I are celebrating our first Christmas together, and it has been fun. We\u2019ve gone for fun drives to see Christmas lights throughout the neighborhoods. SH pulled out the boxes of crates, and I discovered a box from my Queen of Christmas days with enough lights to triple our power bill. At first, I was overwhelmed by the stuff I saw. However, it was easy to let go of most of it and just keep the few things that were happy memories and incorporate them with stuff my friend helped me buy 2 years ago, and new stuff SH and I bought together.<\/p>\n
I think that has been the difference. The togetherness. As I look around my house now \u2013 it doesn\u2019t look like Martha Stewart or HGTV. There are little touches of Christmas here and there \u2013 but more than that \u2013 everything is stuff we did together \u2013 from the hanging of the ornaments on our little Christmas tree \u2013 to the wooden and metal ornaments we hung on the big tree in the front yard \u2013 to the silly solar snowmen that blink on the front walk \u2013 and the rubber Santa duck in the bathroom \u2013 it\u2019s not just Christmas \u2013 it\u2019s memories of us together working on it.<\/p>\n
The Christmas letter I wrote this year was mostly my story \u2013 next year, it will be ours. We sat in front of the TV last night, watching holiday cooking shows and folding and addressing and stamping and licking, and together we got them done. When I dropped them in to the big blue mailbox at work and saw them slide inside and heard the lid clang closed, I felt triumphant. This year the Christmas cheer I feel is not something outside seeping in \u2013 it is something inside bubbling out. <\/p>\n
YAY!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I sent out Christmas cards. This may not seem like a big thing to you, but to me it is monumental. There was a time in my life where I was the Queen of Christmas \u2013 where I had my Christmas letter written, printed, folded and sent by the day after Thanksgiving. My house…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,152],"tags":[146,217,218,216],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","category-the-road-to-recovery","tag-christmas","tag-hgtv","tag-martha-stewart","tag-sh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-7g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}