#MicroblogMondays 69: Best Christmas Ever
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So. What are you doing for Christmas? Are you traveling or hosting or doing a small celebration at home? Did you decorate or skip it this year? And if you decorated, do you have Christmas lights on your house? I love those. Do people turn them off when they go to bed, or do you leave them on all night?
I sort of think of them like a lighthouse, keeping lonely drivers company on the road.
If this Christmas is not your best Christmas, then what has been your best Christmas ever up until this point? What made it so memorable?
Living vicariously through all of you and by watching Love Actually.
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29 comments
This year’s Christmas seems disjointed. Before my husband left we picked a day, dressed the girl in her Christmas pajamas, read her a Christmas story and then the next morning she opened her presents. Obviously since she is not even 2 she doesn’t get ANY of this. One toy was a hit, the other she has barely touched in the month since. She has enjoyed her Christmas books, but she loves books in general. We did not decorate this year. There are no lights, no trees, no stockings. To be honest, aside from the fact the girl won’t have school for two weeks it doesn’t really feel like Christmas.
Last year however was an amazing Christmas – we went to some of the best Christmas markets in the area, we decorated a little, and it was just a lovely time – perhaps it will always rank highly as an amazing Christmas if only because it was my daughter’s first.
I celebrate solstice and Christmas. Solstice is my spiritual holiday. Christmas is my traditional.
I love lights too. So much. I’ve been trying to figure out where to go here in LA to take some pictures. Love.
As Christmases go, this one has been notable because I haven’t been feeling my usual panic. The fact that my Dr increased my antidepressant at the beginning of November may have something to do with that!! Whatever the reason, I’m embracing the fact I haven’t recoiled at the sight of decorations in the stores and neighborhoods lit up like the Griswald’s in National Lamopoon’s Christmas Vacation.
This is the first year in the “new” house for the holidays and we have a tree and all the lights inside and out. Not many in the vicinity have outside decorations, so we’re the exception rather than the rule.
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All in all, not a bad experience this year, though the $ is tighter than ever. I think because I can’t really afford to send gifts, it’s taken a lot of the pressure off. Sort of freeing, really.
And the biggest plus, since Christmas is on Friday this year, I have this Friday off from dialysis. Yay! I’ll have to go on Saturday, but that’s ok.
I hope you get to see lots of sparkling lights this year!
Happy Holidays to everyone. And if it’s not such a happy time for you, this amazing community “has your back.”
❤️?❤️
This is definitely NOT my best Christmas. We have an 8 hour drive ahead, the car has been in the shop for a week and we are hoping to have the car back in time. Plus going to be spending it in searing heat.
Looking back, my happiest Christmases have been the ones spent away from home. I think this is because they allow me/us to escape the expectations, but they are happy in comparison to other years. So if we went away every year it would not be as happy. But I feel a tad odd saying that I prefer the years away from family. I think having years away from family make the years with them more intense and also better- we are not retracing bad habits.
And I loathe Love Actually. I dislike many Christmas movies- die hard is a good one though.
Love Actually is one of my favourites!
We don’t have any lights up outside (just didn’t find the time for it this year), but we have our tree up, and lots of other decorations around the house. This year, we are opening presents at our house in the morning, then picking up my mother and heading over to my inlaws’ house for a big dinner with the entire family. Two days after Christmas, we are hosting a huge party for all of our friends. I’m really looking forward to that- it’s the first time we have ever hosted a holiday party, and I LOVE cooking for big groups of people. I think I should have been a caterer!
This is my best Christmas ever- mostly because I finished all my shopping and preparations weeks ago, and I have been able to just relax and enjoy the season. I usually end up racing around at the last minute, and that inevitably ruins that Christmas ‘feeling.’ Though I have to say- the Christmas that I spend in the Bahamas was a pretty good one, too…
I love Christmas lights too. There are a few towns in Canada that are now encouraging households to leave them up for January and February too because it makes such a difference in the cold and the dark to see them twinkling.
And I also love Love Actually, even though I have read (and agreed with) a bunch of the online articles ripping it to pieces. It came out when I was in the U.K., an ocean away from Q., and it just stuck with both of us. We watch it together every year.
This Christmas is weird because Q. and E. are overseas and I am not, and if the whole point of Christmas is to be with the people you most love, I am not, and thus it is weird. But it will be nice to go and see my family without E. in tow because I will be able to actually talk to my sisters and parents without worrying about what he is up to or needing to get him a snack or answering his sixty-five billion daily questions.
The good thing about this Christmas is I convinced my family to stop exchanging gifts with Q. and I (E. still gets presents). I bought E. a couple of things online and that’s all I had to do. That feels fantastic.
Our town apparently has a lighting competition! We have a few lights on the front porch along with a 1970s era snowman. Sometimes the lights are on all night and I unplug them when I come back from my morning walk. Most people turn them off at bedtime, though, it seems.
Mel – you post’s title made me quickly jump in to Microblogging today. I had already done my Monday post this morning but then your post made me realize this is indeed my best Christmas ever 🙂 🙂
Love Actually is my absolute favorite movie!!
We will visit with my husband’s family on Christmas Eve for lunch. Then it’s off to the 4pm Christmas Eve service where the children’s choir sings and my teen will altar serve. Once home it will just be us, and I have ordered a lunch meat and sandwhich tray spread that we will have for dinner. Christmas morning gets to just be is at home. My MIL will come over in the afternoon, and my mom is bringing dinner that we will fix here. We are forgoing the traditional turkey this year in favor of some other favorites.
We decorate with a HUGE real tree and lots of little Christmasy things around the house. Stockings hung by the chimney with care and all of that. Outside lights set in a timer. Left on all the time will just KILL the electric bill. We used to have a ton of outdoor stuff…a huge manger scene, inflatable snow globes, all of that but have been lost or damaged in the moves. Now that we have the space again we have to rebuild our collection. This years outdoor lights are a little wimpy.
My Christmases of past have run the gamut from sadness over not being pregnant, to my Dad’s last Christmas a month before he died where he couldn’t really participate, to sickly when one of my kids started vomiting at Christmas Eve mass and we all ended up with the stomach flu…so any Christmas where we are all here and well is a good one!
This has been a fun Christmas so far with a toddler who is excited about all of the fun activities we have been doing! We are hosting a small Christmas before my husband’s sister and family come in on the 26th. We definitely decorated this year (didn’t last year because we left on Christmas Day for Spain) and turn off the tree when we head to bed (I worry about starting a fire).
I have never seen Love Actually.
I did a little decorating in the house which mostly consisted of the tree and a few random places Christmassy’ items. We spend most of Christmas Eve and Christmas in the car going back and forth to our families. We have lots of parents and siblings so it’s two days jammed packed of things! I still have so much to get done so I’m a bit stressed about the next three days of our life…
We have outdoor lights up this year. We leave them on all night and turn them off during the day. It’s really pretty and makes us all happy. Just white lights.
Getting ready for some major family time. Sisters, husbands, a niece and nephews, cousins, parents….good food, good coompany. I’m happy because it sounds like this year, we really are focusing more on togetherness than on gifts. On love, actually.
This Christmas we have decided not to do any decorations. We didn’t get a tree or a wreath. I may take out our stockings. We are still going to buy our annual ornament. Since we don’t have a tree this year, the time pressure is off for that purchase. As far as hosting, we are not. We also declined having Christmas dinner with my sister-in-law’s family. We are going to make some steak and have a quiet evening by ourselves. We leave the next day for a four day trip to the coast.
This Christmas seems a lil rushed to me. Days are just flying by and there’s still so much left to be done – decorating the house, making batches of sweets etc. Thankfully, at least the presents are wrapped 😛
This is the first time I kept Christmas tree at my home . My kid had fun decorating it. We also arranged a Christmas PlayDate party at our home ..it was fun with dress code, mini potluck, Santa, gifts etc
Would you believe we’re still decorating? Originally the idea was to keep it simple, but our landlady is home for the holidays and is enjoying adding decorations as she loves the Beats’ response. So more lights are going up and we’re planning a day simply to make sugar cookies. No idea if this Christmas will be an excellent one, but all indications suggest it will be memorable even though it will just be our family of 6 (cats included).
And the scene with Hugh Grant dancing to “Jump” is by far one of my favorites. 😉
My favourite Christmas so far…wow, that’s tough! They tend to all blur together. I think my fave has been Evelyn’s first Christmas. Just watching her soak up the love from all of our family members gathered together…felt so good.
I’ve never had outside lights and never will. It wasn’t something my family did and my husband has less than no interest in Christmas decorating, although for the first year ever he did help me get a tree this year when I eased back into it after not doing a tree for the past 9 years since my mom died. The inside of our house is well decorated. Christmas Eve I’ll cook a full turkey dinner for hubs and dad and myself and we’ll do presents around the tree that night. Christmas Day we will spend at my best friend’s mom’s house with bff and her kids. The best Christmas? Probably the first year or two we were married when my mom was still alive.
My tree is my only decoration. Our house isn’t visible from the road, so no lights. Besides, it doesn’t get dark until 9.30 or 10.00 pm, so their point is a bit lost down at this end of the world.
This year will be very very quiet, with only us, my in-laws, and my husband’s aunt and uncle. My favourite Christmas? Maybe in Vienna with my brother-in-law and family. My SIL decided we had to cook a goose (as apparently that is traditional in Austria), so we had fun googling a recipe, shopping in a supermarket where we couldn’t read ant labels, drinking champagne waiting for our goose to cook, and walking through the old town. I’ve had about eight Christmases overseas over the year, and enjoy the freedom to choose not to celebrate too.
I enjoy hosting Christmas for a crowd, so enjoy those years too, when my brothers-in-law and families return to NZ to s spend it with us. Mostly, it’s a family and food fest marking the beginning of the summer holidays.
We leave our Christmas tree lights on 24/7 – this year (unlike others in the past) we managed to get it up and decorated the first week of December. But this year, again unlike others, that’s about all we’ve done. My (albeit excellent) recovery has necessitated a quiet, low key holiday season. We’re picking my mother up for a four day visit on Wednesday, and we’ll probably have a turkey dinner (the eldest wants to recreate her Thanksgiving feast, which is fine by me), but it will mostly be very relaxed. Meaning it might be my best Christmas ever! LOL!
Happy holidays, everyone!
Christmas Eve is spent with my family, we’ll spend Christmas morning at home, and then we head to Hubby’s family for the night. We are very excited for Christmas this year, because our kiddos are actually old enough to somewhat get excited about it all too. They still don’t quite understand, but it’s very fun to see the Christmas magic through their eyes. We have some decorations inside, but nothing outside. However, I LOVE Christmas lights! Maybe next year we will get inspired to put some up outside.
I also love Christmas lights and this year we have more up than ever. But we do turn them off at night, although I love the analogy about leaving them on. It is a quiet Christmas this year. Me, the hubby and the dog. Happy Holidays to you!
I LOVE “Love Actually!” It’s one of my favorites. I count “When Harry Met Sally” as a Christmas movie, too. We have yet to really watch any movies, and I have so many. I will feel more Christmassy at about 3 tomorrow afternoon, when school is out for break. It has been a ridiculously busy season and I am looking forward to space to breathe. We decorated fully for the first time in years, and are planning to simulate being in Vermont for the holiday only here at the house–full on hermitting, cooking great food and drinking great wine, hiking, and generally hiding away from the world in our little bubble. Now you have me excited to do a movie marathon! 🙂
thanks for the reminder mel, i will also celebrate by watching love actually, even though i only have half of the movie (don’t ask!). i will also read a lot of books -i recently learned of the icelandic tradition of gifting books on christmas eve, which people then stay up reading; awesome 🙂 i think i will do that with my kids!
We are spending Christmas with my family, as we always do. The celebrations have evolved over the years — for example, my grandparents are no longer with us 🙁 but the little girl who grew up across the street from my parents and who has spent every Christmas of her life with us is now all grown up and bringing HER little girls over to help us celebrate. 🙂 We have pickerel on Christmas Eve & open our presents to each other (as per my grandmother’s Scandinavian traditions); on Christmas Day we have stockings and eat turkey. 🙂 We don’t put up Christmas lights at home — I’d like to, but dh could care less :p — but we do put up a tree. My parents have lights outside and two trees inside — one decorated with old fashioned big coloured lights and the ornaments that have been on their tree since I was a baby or even earlier; the other more “modern.” We turn off the lights at night.
I can’t pinpoint one particular Christmas as “best” — although I have distinct memories of certain Christmases because of presents I got or things that happened. I just love being together, eating lots of good food, playing cards & board games & Yahtzee. I even like the cold & the snow — I can’t imagine Christmas without it, and I can only recall about two Christmases where there’s been no snow. It’s going to be 14C on Christmas Eve where we live; but where we’re celebrating it will be -7C — which is actually not too bad as far as cold temperatures go here. 😉
Sadly, no outside lights this year. 🙁 But, the tree is up, and I really need to post a pic of it on my blog because we literally only put lights on the top half because we were afraid of Baby Z trying to eat them. For reals. What I look forward to every year is Christmas Eve when S and I have a fondue dinner on our wedding china with a fancily decorated table.
I’ve found that, usually, I enjoy the Christmases I spend here in Spain less than the ones I spend back in the States. I think it’s a matter of it “feeling” like Christmas, stockings in the morning in front of a fire, etc. Here Christmas Eve is just as important and we don’t have a car so we always end up sleeping over at my in-laws. It’s nice, but not what I really crave. Oh, well. Maybe next year!
I’m guessing this is going to be one of my more boring Christmases. We’re spending it at my father-in-law’s and it’s going to be a small one with about 8 people. One of my fondest memories of Christmas was back in Malaysia when my Mum would put out the huge tree and decorate it with mini candy canes and these beautiful lights that also played music. I loved those musical lights! We would leave the lights on all night and play the music in the morning while fighting over the red candy canes. Because everyone knows the other colours that taste exactly the same aren’t actually the same. Ah, to be young again.
Best Christmas ever, hands down. Big sis just turned 4, and our twin boys are 11 weeks old. Our hearts are full and it’s the first Christmas where I’m not longing for a baby, or another baby.
We do have a fake tree, leave the colored lights on all night. It’s very cosy :-). We live in Dubai where it’s summer year round, the tree makes it feel cold, like a fireplace.