Sylvia's Journal

The joyful holiday season, which tend to dread, passed quite pleasantly this year. It was, as it is supposed to be, rather joyful. It was also chaotic, with the 6 of us adults, two grandchildren and three grand-dogs in our not so large living space. The space shrinks when you add a Christmas tree, however small.

I would prefer to have the Christmas tree outside, but Axel insists it is inside. At the start of December, he always says something like: “this year I will get the Christmas tree early.” I don’t encourage this so I don’t do any reminding. He gets busy with other things, until Christmas is nearly there and only small and scraggly Christmas trees remain, the Charlie Brown kind. I like it. Additional benefit of late buying: there is always a discount this late in the game.

I trim the tree (because he is still busy). As soon as Christmas is over I remove the ornaments and return the boxes to the (unplugged) freezer chest that holds the Christmas stuff. And the space opens up again. I can handle a short week of Christmas clutter and cramped ness.

We left for Easthampton on Christmas Eve to witness the waking up on Christmas Day kids’ experience (joyful and frantic).  Later on Christmas morning we drove back to Manchester where Tessa and Steve joined us bringing a complete Mediterranean Christmas meal, nearly fully prepared. This is a Christmas gift I wouldn’t mind getting every year. Tessa also brought home made gifts, including a perfect gingerbread house that would make Martha Stewart jealous (and I would have killed for as a kid). It had stained glass windows made from melted hard candy, an indoor carpet made from red and green M&Ms, a fence from red striped white Hershey kisses, roof tiles made from white chocolate pastilles and frosted snow in even little florets along the roof line and window sills. Her home-made white chocolate body butter and olive oil presents were equally perfect. Tessa goes for ‘prefect,’ unlike her mother who has adopted a ‘good enough for now (or for the occasion)’ attitude long ago.

The gingerbread house got demolished the day after Christmas, as if a bomb had gone off inside it. It provided Faro with even more sugar than he had already been consuming. He particularly liked the stained glass. It was kind of sad to see it destroyed, but then again, as a kid, you don’t always want to look at a gingerbread house. You want to eat it.

We ate our Lebanese mezze and other Mediterranean delicacies all day long, opened gifts, read Christerklaas poems and searched for hidden presents all over the house, while the dogs licked up any of the foods spilled or dropped by careless little and big humans. It was a good Christmas, leaving Axel and me grateful for our blessings and with anticipation of art classes we will take in the summer at Snow Farm in western Massachusetts (https://www.snowfarm.org) – a gift from Sita and Jim.

New Year’s Eve was passed with friends and a good night sleep while 2018 quietly made way for 2019. The next day we were on our way to see my siblings in Holland.