Okay, so, everyone everywhere is talking about Star Wars. Even people that have never seen any of the Star Wars films (I'm trying not to judge) are joining in the pop culture extravaganza by posting memes about how they've never seen Star Wars. (Let's see how many times I can say Star Wars in one paragraph.)
Seeing as yesterday the Force awakened I thought coming up with some awesome exploration of the films would be culturally relevant and I would sound really cool. I really couldn't think of anything. At least nothing fresh. To be fair I have had a distracting ear worm for the last three days. (Can someone please tell me why that girl wants a hippopotamus for Christmas because I don't get it.)
Anyway, I sat down at my little laptop and did what anyone in my position would do. I googled for ideas. (For my other author friends with holiday writer's block you can totally google "Christmas blog post ideas" and hit the mother load.) Then, being me, I spent an obscene amount of time perusing "Star Wars memes". (Click Here. You're welcome.)
What did I come up with? Nothing! (But you're probably already catching on to that.)
Really, with all the thoughts of Christmas traditions and outfits and parties and newsletters and cards I got a little insecure. I discovered I'm not as "Christmassy" as I could be, or maybe should be.
Here's the deal (prepare yourselves your some brutal honesty)...
-Half of my decorations stayed in a box this year because I have a 100 pound husky who might eat them.
- I did not get my kids new pairs of Christmas pajamas because they didn't have any at Walmart and I didn't want to drive any further to look.
- I did not send Christmas cards. (I actually never do this one but for some reason this year it has felt a little more wrong on my part.)
- I will not be decorating a gingerbread house again this year. (Last year it was a fiasco that my OCD could not handle that ended with above mentioned husky eating the people and the roof off the house.)
- I have not introduced my kids to a single classic Christmas television special. (They don't know who the grinch is.)
Phew. Getting that all out there actually felt kind of cathartic. But if I'm even more honest I look at all the Pinterest perfect holiday cards and pictures with Santa (we didn't do that either) and I wonder if I'm a bad mom. I wonder if my kids are missing out on some of the magic of the holidays and when they get older will realize it and think I'm a bad mom. Anybody else been there? Here's the conclusion I've come to...I am not doing Christmas wrong just because I'm not doing everything. (And neither are you.)
We have decorated our imperfect little tree together as a family, complete with a ton of ornaments on the bottom branches because my three year old insisted on only hanging them there. We have sung carols loudly in the car or while cooking dinner. We have curled up to watch cheesy Christmas movies. (You know the ones, they are all bascially 1 of 3 storylines that just change names and locations.) Tomorrow they will pick out this years ornament of choice. They will watch the Veggietales version of the story of St. Nicholas and on Christmas Eve they will read the Christmas story before turning on their Santa ornament, leaving food for the reindeer (someone has to) and curling up to sugarplum dreams. On Christmas morning they will open their gifts and their faces will light up and they won't care that we didn't build a gingerbread house or send out cards. And in twenty years when they are grown they may realize they didn't do everything all the other kids did but they had fun, they had their own small traditions and they were loved.
And then we will watch Star Wars.