Traditions

Christmas is 9 days away, can you believe it?

As much as I want to say I am not ready for Christmas, or the end of 2021, I actually feel I am more ready this year than I have ever been. My mind is preoccupied less with gifts and more with how quickly this year has passed, how my children have grown, and how different life feels this year than last.

I was fortunate to have been able to do most of my shopping in November, which I have to admit is quite uncharacteristic of me.  I am forever a last-minute shopper and a “running out the door, coffee, and lipstick in hand” kind of woman.  Needless to say, somehow the magic of Christmas was on my side, and I was able to find wonderful, meaningful, and exciting gifts for my loved ones this year.  I am most excited about my children’s gifts.

My oldest is a perfect blend of charm and quirkiness. He is sarcastic and relentlessly kind. He is deeply empathetic and incredibly bright. He memorizes Smithsonian fact books on trains and can explain how engines work while we drive to school in the mornings with little to no effort. He is my first baby, and despite being nearly as tall as I am, he and I still communicate through looks and soft reassuring smiles. The gifts he asks for are never easy to find, and almost always very “grown-up”. This year I was able to find many of the things on his list, and imagining his smile while opening those gifts fills me with a kind of warmth and hope I struggle to embody these days. 

My youngest is still quite young, this is only his second Christmas and technically more like his first, as his first Christmas was spent in quarantine. He is mischievous and wild, full of giggles, kisses, and the most irresistible toothy grins. He makes me laugh, and then immediately after makes me want to pull my hair out. He is fearless and loud, and to this day falls asleep at night with his arms around my neck. Shopping for him was such a joy. He is the kind of child that softens you, one who knows effortlessly how to remind you of your own youth. Finding gifts he would love was more a search for the best things to keep a relentlessly curious toddler occupied for more than two minutes, I hope I was successful.

I have a deep love of gift-giving, second only to being with my family during the holidays.  My family, like many of you, has a plethora of holiday traditions. Many of ours have been passed down for several generations at this point, and while most have retained their origins, some have changed entirely over time. If I am honest, despite my best efforts I have struggled deeply over the years in an attempt to recreate and uphold these traditions in my own family. My family was not a reflection of my own childhood, and I was not in a position, when Ben was little, to offer the kind of stability I wanted to, we never stayed in one place long enough to create memories. Now, several years later as I have gotten older, healed, and grown, my entire perception has shifted. I feel I am less concerned with recreating my own magical upbringing than I am with creating brand new magic for my children, and for myself.

I am sure I cannot be the only one embracing and creating new traditions this year. It has been a year of change in every way possible.  For me, there is grief in what we have lost, in the memories we were not able to create, and in traditions, we were not able to celebrate. But in that grief, there is also hope, there are new memories waiting to be created and new ways to celebrate our most cherished traditions. Sadness and thankfulness are not mutually exclusive. The magic is in the moments we share, the love we give, and in the courage, it takes to begin anew.

Wishing you and your loved ones all the magic of Christmastime, and the blessing of creating new memories. Cheers to celebrating the New Year in all the ways that bring you closer to what matters most.

Love,

Mandy, Billy, Ben, and Ollie