As November slips away, the insane month of December rears its head. Insane because everyone seems to be stressed out trying to cram as much buying and selling and making and baking, as much visiting and eating and event attending as possible before the 24th.
As an aside, a Black Friday advertisement crossed my socials for a really amazing price on art supplies and I thought, "I need more art supplies! I need to buy this!" Only I didn't. I'm okay for art supplies right now. At some future point, I'll need some paint but until then, I'm fine. Just fine. And it made me realize how caught up and invested we become in the hype to BUY! BUY! BUY! It took me a minute but then I thought, "Chill out, dude. The stores will remain open AFTER the 24th." There will always be more time to buy shit.
For the past number of years, I've bought my grandchildren Advent calendars as their gift from us. They are blessed with plenty. They don't lack for anything. The calendars, we try to get some sort of activity (think Lego, puzzles etc) last longer than the half second of ripping off the paper to be tossed with a mounting pile of "stuff" and they are a lovely slow way of counting down, building up, to Christmas Day.
I was thinking about that a few weeks ago, "*I* want a daily thing to do in December!" and sure I could've bought a calendar for myself but I wanted it to be something I could share with Tom. Something that was enjoyable, not based on food and would serve as a lovely slow way of counting down, building up, to Christmas Day.
So we put our brains together and came up with a daily activity for each day in December, marked it on the calendar and we're going to give it a whirl.
As I am very much an introvert hermit, we were cogniscent of not slamming things in for the sake of "Doing it". We gave ourselves easy tasks between more involved ones. Some of the activities we were going to do anyway, but we added intentionality to them. In case you'd like to create a lovely slow way of counting down, building up, to Christmas Day, here are some of our ideas:
- December 1: Go buy all supplies for our crafts and baking days.
- December 3 & 4: Baking days ... we made a list of the things we'd like to gift people this year, an annual tradition, and decided we could put in a blitz weekend to get most of it down in one sitting. Cue Christmas music!
- Every Friday evening in December, we've committed to watching a Holiday movie or show. Must watches in our household: Charlie Brown's Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas - the OG. I voted for Elf. He voted for the new Spirited. And there is room for one super schmaltzy Hallmark one in there too!
- Go out, just the two of us, for a holiday coffee/beverage. We almost never do this, so it'll be a real treat.
- Make a trip to either the city or our town to walk around and look at the lights.
- Make a craft for our Solstice Tree. (we're making homemade air clay! Here's a recipe!)
- Take in a Christmas concert. Preferably with choral singing.
- Go for a night woods walk on the December full moon (Wednesday, December 7: The Cold Moon)
- Have a bonfire.
- We pencilled in our tradition of meeting with friends for lunch. And another with other friends, for a coffee at a local shop.
- Make a "bird tree" and fill it with edible treats for them. Here's a great one!
- We decorate our Solstice Tree on the day before Solstice and have a tradition of writing down then burning our regrets for 2022, shared or not, on the night itself. After which we come in and dine by candlelight.
- Christmas Eve is our turkey dinner. We take all day to prepare and again, dine by candle light (then all dinners until the Spring Equinox). Candle light is a big part of our winter world.
- Christmas day we've planned a beach walk.
I hope this has inspired you to think about how YOU'D like to spend your time at this crazy time of the year. And I wish you a lovely slow count down, build up, to however you celebrate!