Christmas Shake-Up

As I’m writing this we’re on our way to White Plains to exchange gifts with Jen’s aunts, cousin, and g-ma. The scenery and homes we are passing on the train are so beautiful it’s hard to stay focused on writing…

 The holiday season feels different for everyone. Depending on one’s family tradition, there are certain tastes, smells, and sounds that can remind us of Christmas. For Jen, it has been filled with lots of cooking and consuming delicious home-cooked food and a quiet Christmas morning opening gifts with her family at home.  Conversely, for me, it has always had the feel of a fourteen-hour drive followed by severe cat-allergy attacks, the taste of semi-homemade food (such as instant mash-potatoes), and total chaos and clutter as we open our gifts with family (and random friends of family on occasion). And I say all this fondly because it’s just what Christmas has always been like for me… until this year.

Because I was hired a little late in the year the request-off calendar was void of any valuable days. This meant working the days before and after both Thanksgiving and Christmas (so no time to travel) and spending the holidays here in NYC. It could be worse, I know. I told Jen she could travel, as she has no trouble getting time off, but she was nice enough to stand by her hubby for the holidays. It’s a good thing she did! Who else would eagerly wake me with the news that it was Christmas morning and time to open Christmas presents? We spent the morning happily opening gifts from each other and my family while listening to classic Christmas songs and the crackling fire (on our TV). We spent the rest of the day in our warm apartment relaxing, talking to family, and sipping Jen’s concocted cider and eggnog.

Working the day before and after Christmas made the holiday feel too insignificant; less like Christmas to us and more like a really extravagant day off. But I don’t know if we’ll ever have a more stress free, do-what-we-want kind of Christmas ever again so we’re grateful for the variety. Next year is looking more promising…. to my coworker’s surprise, weeks before this year’s holidays, I requested both Thanksgiving and Christmas 2014 off. I was only approved for Christmas but am not worried about Thanksgiving, considering I have a year to change my boss’s mind.

Happy New Year!