Why do We like celebrating Christmas late, and why would we do that?
For most of you–Christmas is a day in the past! It’s come and gone, and you’re left with a pile of crumpled paper, sparkly lights, and memories to carry you til next season!
Doesn’t it fly by quickly?
These days it seems that we are so busy preparing for Christmas that we literally don’t have time to just sit down and enjoy Christmas.
Seriously. Ask yourself–did Christmas vanish in a cloud of tissue paper and toys? Was Christmas everything you wanted it to be?
Some people want to quickly move past one holiday and barrel on to the next one. But I like to linger.
At our home, we hate to see Christmas go!
AdThose little lights make our home so much more cozy!
We are all a bit nostalgic, and to we love to look at Christmas ornaments from years gone by!
My mom has a practice of buying every family member a new ornament each year. These traditions are very special. And even though we don’t have a tree, we do look at the ornaments and remember when she got them for us. (We keep saying, “We’ll have a tree next year!” One of these years that will come true). Adam (15) loves to bring out the Christmas box and decorate. I love the end results, but would not drag out the decorations without a house. Thankfully, he’s not me.
We have not had our Family Christmas yet!
It’s December 28, and we are again celebrating Christmas late! On purpose.
Every year, since my brother and I are both nurses, we choose a convenient date and make that our Christmas gathering time. This year, it’s actually on New Year’s Day! For us, the day is not as important as the family being together.
And we get the bonus of stretching out our Christmas season!
We rarely celebrate early–almost always late as far as the date goes, but it always works out. Except for that one year when we waited until March–Mom said never again will she wait that long!
We’ve discovered some fun (and thrifty) reasons to celebrate Christmas late:
- We can procrastinate longer! This is great for me–I can put off ordering gifts til the last minute and usually still get them by our Christmas since the mail has slowed down after the huge rush. I’ve actually been very impressed this year with the speed of delivery of gifts! I’ve taken quite a few chances, and so far so good!
- After Christmas Sales! This is really smart. If you plan it right (not saying I do) you can get some super good deals right after Christmas! My boys went out to the store the day after Christmas and found all of the cologne gift sets 50% off! Wait a couple days and save big–pretty smart! Just stay away from the return lines–they’re brutal!
- Time to enjoy the season! Like I mentioned before, we never have enough time to just enjoy the season. This gives us longer to enjoy our lights, the music, and everything decorated so cheerfully! I’d be very happy if they’d leave Christmas lights up all year long!
- Christmas downtime. On Christmas Eve, we took a relaxing family get-together with my parents. See A Happy Camper Christmas. On Christmas Day, we went to church, then came home and had a genuinely low-key day! Everyone literally crashed and slept for awhile (hard week), and my husband and I took a walk around our property. We then just stayed in and enjoyed a sweet Christmas movie, The Christmas Jars. It had a good message. After our day in–something rare these days with a very active church youth ministry–I totally understand the whole “Let’s stay home” theme. It good to stay in sometimes.
- Heightened anticipation. When everyone’s had their Christmas gathering, we can still anticipate the joy of our time and the surprises awaiting us! That’s just fun!
- We are non-conformists, so why be normal? We’ve not been normal for a very long time. I guess this is just one more area where we’re doing our own thing.
- We like to work on Christmas. Ok, I hope you didn’t take that too seriously. We’ve done this for so long that for us it works. My brother always chooses to sacrifice and work Christmas so that those with families can have their day together. He has a big heart. And he makes sure to always take off on Thanksgiving, so that’s our day.
Those are some of the reasons that we enjoy celebrating Christmas late! For us, we are still waiting!
For some reason, during that whole week or so before Christmas I do feel some push to get things ready. After all, the whole world is in a rush! But I also know I don’t have to meet the deadline, so I relax a bit. It gives me time to breathe.
And even though this is technically our “week before Christmas”, we are pretty much sailing along, since we anticipated a heavy work week this week. I knew I wouldn’t have time to do much, so I did get most everything (except for the food) done.
I hope everyone had a merry Christmas! I hope that you were able to bless others and make them happy through your time together! 
Just a few more days in this year! Hope you make them great!
(Late) Christmas blessings,
Laurie
