A very imperfect Advent

...but we're all together now!

‘Twas three nights before Christmas
and here at the Boyds’
A twinkling, mad chaos
Makes cats overjoyed.

…or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that our cats are alternately thrilled and exhausted by the boxes and baubles, the pine needles and paper, the singing and sleigh bells. In December, it’s become a tradition in our home evade even the merest whiff of neat and tidy (save for my compulsive need to wash all the dishes every night, thank you FlyLady). Unwrapped gifts have been hastily stuffed under the couch, awaiting wrapping in secret moments. We’re hoping our Christmas stamps will arrive before the post office goes on holiday. We’ve baked about 10% of our usual cookie quota and yet I still can’t stop finding (and inventing) new recipes. But I’m discovering a beautiful thing about having a child home from college: the togetherness is what brings joy. Jon and Rosie picked up a fragrant tree on Saturday, Lucy gave me the gift of vacuuming up the worst of the dust bunnies, and my voice fully returned in time to sing yesterday morning at church. Joy to the world!

Every year, I’m learning to hold my Christmas ideals more loosely. As my friend Carrie describes it, some of us have a Christmas Disorder — an incurable vision for producing a Christmas of grand proportions with exacting detail. My Advent and Christmas to-do lists is over three thousand words long, spanning lists of gifts (don’t forget St. Nicholas Day!), cookies (shall we attempt a glögg-flavored rum ball this year?), decorations (there is still time to hang ornaments on the crabapple tree in our front yard!), and other miscellaneous details like, “Remember that Rosie wants to pick out a Christmas tree and purchase it with Jon! Forgot about this in 2022 and it was a grief for her.” Dreaming big in this season brings me an effervescent delight, but the practice of letting go is difficult, grown-up work, and … very necessary. As every Christmas special reminds us, Christmas is less about sparkles and bows than it is about love and generosity and togetherness. This is something that I know to be true, but I need to learn it better every year.

There were years that I strove for near-perfection, demanding of myself delight-filled and seemingly effortless Advent traditions — and it looked pretty good, but it came at the cost of a month of insomnia and some Advent meltdowns for me. Even in those years, I actively struggled to gain control over my Strega-Nona’s-pot of ever-growing personal expectations. These days, those visions of sugarplums still dance in my head, but they don’t all come to fruition and I’ve come to accept that. I hope to be healing from my Christmas disorder, replacing it now with a simple Christmas hysteria.

This year in particular has brought unique challenges as we’ve experienced a rolling tide of viruses that flowed from Lucy to me to Jon to Rosie, coloring our festivities from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Due to illness and contagion, my baking plans have been severely curtailed and we’re only now getting started, grateful that everyone is on the mend.

It’s especially ironic because I’ve felt rather anxious about this Advent season for a full year. “How will we observe Advent with Lucy at school?” I began wondering in January. “How rude of Wheaton College and Chicago Public Schools — they’ve scheduled winter break to begin so late! December 20!”

Anticipating the extra thought needed to celebrate Advent with one child living outside the home, I planned to get my planning going early. At the end of last year’s Christmas season, I wrote myself a letter to read on October 1:

Dear Ann of October 2024,

Welcome to October 1! I’m sure it is lovely outside — perhaps still warm, perhaps a bit like fall, but not at all like Christmas yet. The energy is still about the new school year and maybe starting to turn toward pumpkins and Halloween. If anything, you might be thinking about Thanksgiving, and Christmas feels ages away.

But I’m here to tell you: you must start thinking about Christmas now. There are just some logistical things that need to happen in order for you to enjoy the season and get more than six hours of sleep each night in December…

The letter helped me acknowledge the fact that my holiday plans cannot be contained in a four-week or even an eight-week period. Twelve weeks is perhaps adequate, although this year, I’ve learned that we may need an extra four weeks on presidential election years. And there is, of course, the risk of illness, which may require another four weeks of buffer. Aw shucks, I may as well follow the rhythms of the Santa’s elves and just start planning for next year on January 7!

Although I’ve been hitting a number of speed bumps on the way toward Christmas, the journey has elicited a lot of gratitude and delight — for Lucy coming home on December 19 (one day early!), for Rosie singing exuberantly in the shower, for Jon feeling well enough post-Covid that he can work on repairing a new-to-him typewriter. The batch of gingerbread cookies that we baked Thursday felt all the more special since we had literally no other homemade cookies in the house (a state we are now repairing). The tree went up a little late this year, but it smells amazing and Jon is ecstatic about the fancy new tree stand he bought this summer — easy to secure the tree and easy to keep it watered!

It’s not perfect, but we’re all together — and that feels hugely special. In a new season with children growing up and out, I’m profound grateful for life with these dear humans.

And we wish you a Merry Christmas, dear readers! May your twelve days of Christmas be filled with joy and gratitude and delight.

Tidbits

I have a smorgasbord of little things to tell you about — some practices to keep me going, some little delights, but all a little Christmassy.

• Christmas coffee. Inspired by Emily P. Freeman, I’ve been adding a little bit of pumpkin pie spice to my coffee grounds when I make my morning coffee. It doesn’t really make it taste like “flavored” coffee, but it does add just a little bit of specialness to my morning cup.

• I wrote a piece over at The Well about children’s books and Mary’s song from Luke 1 and the ways those seemingly disparate things connect. It was fun to get a lot of these thoughts into writing!

  

• We intend to get our traditional Boyd MadLib Christmas cards into the mail tomorrow — fingers crossed that the postage arrives! You can read it online, or let us know if you’d like us to send you a copy.

• Although I’m hoping to do a lot more baking, let me recommend a few recipes!

  • These chocolate caramel graham crackers are delicious and so quick! I’ve made a few batches just to tide us over in mid-December.

  • I just made a batch of these cranberry brown butter blondies and they are amazing! I recommended adding some cinnamon and doubling the oat topping.

  • These favorite butter toffee crunch shortbread cookies are sure to make an appearance soon.