Shirlv wrote: 
#2 daughter keeps asking by text if she should bring my Christmas tree and decorations I was thinking about skipping the tree for the first time in my life. Haven’t felt like it mentally or physically. My family won’t be together this year. My many trips to the hospital shook the whole family and me spending Christmas without a tree will upset them again.
I hear you on this one, Shirl. I definitely hear you, especially the "mentally or physically" part. I won't be together with my family this year, either, but will do a Christmas video visit over the internet, and for that I am very thankful.
I have about decided (like you, for the first time in my life) to skip all the Christmas decorations altogether. When on video chat last weekend with my kids, my daughter was excitedly talking about decorating her home the day after Thanksgiving (as I always used to do), and asked me when I was going to start. I said I was probably going to take a "pass" on Christmas this year.
I could see she was really surprised, shocked even, and probably even a little sad.
From the time my kids were really small, I have always tried to do a bang-up Christmas, whether we had money to spend - or (mostly) not. When my daughter was young, and I had an extremely limited budget for food, let alone presents, I made her a really nice doll house (about 3 foot tall and two food wide!) out of small cardboard boxes glued together, covered the outside with paper mache "siding", and used leftover bits of linoleum for the "flooring". I furnished it with plastic furniture from the Dollar Store. In those days one could get a package of three or four pieces of crappy miniature plastic furniture for $1.00.
She loved it, and I still have it.
When my kids were older, I even went so far as to take my ladder and climb up on the roof of our house, yelling "Ho-Ho-Ho" and stomping around like reindeer would. Of course, being older kids, they both knew it was me, but we all had a really good laugh about it when I got down.
Christmas was really fun in those days, particularly after the ex had gone.
Like Martha, I have a small artificial tree, about 4' tall, that I put on a box in my living room to make it seem taller. I fully decorated it, complete with ornaments and blinking colored lights. I just throw a sheet over it after Christmas and put it in the garage when Christmas is over. The next year all I need to do is take the sheet off, carry it out of the garage, and plug it in and it is ready to go!
Just about the easiest Christmas tree ever!
What my kids don't know, and I will not tell them, is that for the last several years I have only decorated my house early in the morning of the exact day they are due to arrive (whether on the actual holiday or not, doesn't matter so long as they come). They usually stay over night, the minute they walk out the door and until their car turns the corner down the street, I stand outside waving, then go inside and immediately take everything back down and put it away. Within an hour or so I am done.
I do this partly because I worry about my sweet Joe boy getting into the decorations (none of which are dog-friendly). But mostly just because I can't stand looking at the decorations when they are not here.
When they were kids, I decorated our small (seven hundred square foot) house to the "nines" the day after Thanksgiving, and didn't take anything back down again until New Years Day. I even made special Christmas curtains for the windows and Christmas throws and Christmas doilys (out of discount Christmas fabric from the fabric store), and. . . you name it.
So each year we had an entire
month of Christmas!! It was
GREAT!! And I absolutely LOVED it.
Back then, I was intentionally trying to make wonderful memories of Christmases past for my kids as they grew up. I know that I have succeeded.
That's Christmas enough for me.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Anne
