Christmas week

I do understand that for many people, Christmas Eve begins the period of celebration. If you follow that tradition, then the twelve days that follow Christmas ostensibly trigger a long lasting birthday party of sorts, no? One religion-focused website instructs celebrants to keep on partying until the Epiphany (January 6th). It's the Feast of Three Kings, emphasis on feast. So, feast and party away, from Christmas Day until then. It's a bit of a simplified view of the holiday, but that's the way I have always understood it to be in Poland. There, the tree goes up on Christmas Eve and then I suppose you rejoice for twelve days after.

Since I have always picked aspects of the holiday that fit within my own view on what should be celebrated, I sort of flipped everything: Christmas activity starts now, and the momentum grows until the holiday itself, and then it fizzles. Done. The music, the feasting, the family gatherings, and yes, the presents -- all finished oh, maybe one or two days after Christmas. I'm ready then to put away ornaments and switch back to my jazzy folksy classical music. The Christmas tree is usually tired, and so am I! 

Thus for me, it's the week before Christmas that's special. It's contemplative. It's anticipatory. It's like the days before Thanksgiving: all full of hope, no recipe has failed yet, no weather event has foiled your best laid plans to travel to be with family. It's all beautiful and intense and potently sentimental. 

I suppose for my family, the joyful gatherings will always begin now around the time of Juniper's birth. And immediately after that, we fully engage in holiday madness. And so today I wake up to that feeling of incredulity: we have passed the midpoint of December. Solstice is on Wednesday, Eve on Saturday, Day on Sunday. A loaded week of preparations. 

I also wake up to a very real cold spell. An Arctic blast rarely makes its way down here for the holidays. But this year -- wow, it's really cold, all the way through Christmas Day. 

With the chilly air, though, comes a crispy frosted beauty. When I go out to feed the animals, I take my time, detouring to corners of the farmette land that I rarely visit in the wintertime. I see that another tree has fallen. But mostly I see the magic of a winter with snow.

The hens are all clustered in the barn, refusing to step out into the big freeze, except for the one Bresse girl who insists on laying her egg in the garage. She runs over as soon as the coop door opens and stays in a box on top of the table saw until the egg pops out...

... then back she goes to rejoin the rest.

The cats? They take a long while before finally stepping outside.

Ed is sleeping late today, though I wake him when friends drop in with Christmas greetings. We linger with them around the kitchen table and postpone our breakfast until after. In the meantime, I light a candle -- my new juniper one. It triggers memories of a December celebration alright!

Yes, it is a late breakfast, but that shouldn't have thrown me off. We often eat quite late. But somehow, between that and the fact that I have no scheduled Snowdrop pick up (she is still home sick), I am completely lost to the world, planning out menus and making lists, and this is all fine, except that at 12:30 I am startled to see that it is... 12:30! I have a coffee date with my daughter set for 12:15, on the other side of town! [She wants to hear every detail of the birthday bash, since she had to miss it due to the illness that swept through her home.] I have never in my whole life lost track of time so completely. I carry a clock in my head all the time, to the point that I never need alarms and wake-ups, nor reminding pings and calls -- I know when to get up, when to pick up kids at school, or take them to lessons and appointments. I'm on automatic clock pilot!

Not today. Today I completely messed up. And mind you, my daughter is the one who is on a work schedule and has the time constraints that I no longer have. Sigh...

Well, we do have our coffee and my girls are always very forgiving of parental eccentricities and peccadillos. But after, I hop over to Clasens Bakery (my last visit there this season!) and pick up some chocolate gingerbread to atone for my unfortunate behavior today. 

And I take it over to the young family's home, where (from behind a mask) I also get to visit with Snowdrop -- sick since Friday, though hopefully on her last day of whatever bug circulated in their house.

After I come home, Ed and I toss around the idea of going skiing. We are really unmotivated! It's cold! It's late! We've got stuff to do! Tomorrow! For sure!

Tonight, I reheat the soup I made yesterday and we tear off pieces of bread from Clasens and thank our stars that we have such a wonderfully warm house, and me -- that I have such wonderfully warm daughters in my life.

With so much love...