I love Christmas!!

So from what I've seen here I may be the only one but just in case I'm not I thought I would start a thread for people who actually like the holidays!

Maybe the secret is that we save time with our families for January. For years both my partner and I were in big box retail management and so couldn't take time off during the holidays. As my family is in Utah and his in Oklahoma that effectively meant we couldn't do the holidays with them which has actually worked out pretty well. We visit them in January and it's like a whole other holiday--my family actually leave up all the Christmas decorations until we arrive. It's fun. So we have developed our own little holiday traditions--and frankly, when we both moved out of retail and could take time off during the holidays we were so entrenched in our own little traditions that going to visit family just didn't really seem like Christmas any more.

We love the lights and decorations and sometimes will go down to the Magnificent Mile here and just wander the stores looking at the decorations, not even buying anything. We play Christmas music pretty much non-stop from Thanksgiving on--sometimes a little earlier if we need a lift. We do the whole decorating thing--live tree with our ornaments that we have collected over the years. We try to add a couple really individual ornaments a year to our collection--whether it is from our travels or just after Christmas specials. We have such a fun and quirky collection of ornaments that more and more people give us ornaments as gifts. We also do a second smaller tree with only gay themed ornaments and of course now gay themed ornaments have become the de rigeur gift for visiting our home in December, seriously they have become almost as common of a hostess gift for us as wine. If things keeps going the way they are the gay tree will be as big as the main tree one of these days.

We love entertaining during the holidays. We generally do a couple smaller dinner parties and one large cocktail party. We have learned over the years that one of the keys to a successful cocktail party is to only invite people you want to come. It sounds silly but seriously the next time you are planning a party notice how many times the phrase "well, and then we have to invite..." comes up. We don't invite any of those people. The corollary to this one is that we only accept invitations if we actually want to go to the party. Everyone's busy in December and so almost everyone accepts the excuse that you already have something going, so we don't accept invites out of any sense of obligation--only because we actually want to go.

We have also learned over the years that I way over plan for a party. You just don't need 32 different passed hors d'oeuvres, 16 of which have to be served hot. This is my default setting and so we have developed a system over the years. My partner comes up with a couple things he would like to serve then I make up a list of what I would like to make for the party. I am then allowed to put stars next to 4 of them (2 of which have to be able to be made in advance) and then my partner goes through the list and crosses out about half of what's left and that's what we make.:lol:

We try to do several Christmas themed events throughout the month. Both gay choruses in town do a Christmas concert. Sometime we'll go to the Nutcracker or a performance of Handel's Messiah. We usually go to the little German Christmas village they do downtown and have hot spiced wine. We will go one evening to the zoo to look at all the lights. And, well, several of the bars in town do Christmas themed events--some of them rather off color (Christmas drag queens and hunky elves that sort of thing)--which can be fun.

We do silly little gifts, often home-baked goods, for just about everyone we know, send some sort of gift (often again something edible--most people we know just don't need more stuff) to each household within our family (no individual gifts) and then we do gifts for each other--half of which really is just stuff we actually need (but we still wrap it all and set it under the tree). We drink eggnog and make a whole appetizer feast for Christmas Eve and watch kids Christmas specials--sometimes we will go out to the bar which was sort of our home base back in our clubbing days for a drink. There's always a few people from that group--sometimes people who haven't been there in months (or maybe even since last Christmas Eve) who just wanted to share this special evening with "family".

We do the whole shebang for Christmas morning. Santa comes and brings gifts and stuffs stockings--seriously we both sneak out of bed in the middle of the night to play Santa. Usually it goes off without a hitch--occasionally there's a comment in the morning something along the lines of "Santa tried to come at about 3 in the morning but discovered that he was already here--he came back at 4.":lol: Santa always brings fresh-squeezed orange juice and champagne so we can have mimosas as we open gifts. We actually have a set of flutes (I think they are actually wedding toast flutes--they have doves worked into the stems) that we only use on Christmas morning. And then we go out for a very nice dinner (it's generally the most we spend on a meal in the year) late in the afternoon on Christmas.

I just love how cheerful and happy people are during this season--well, at least in public I suppose--how people are often more inclined during this time of year to think of others and I really look forward to it all year. In a way I suppose we don't really spend it the traditional way. We aren't really religious--although we have a beautiful nativity set. And I will say I find the story of Christmas and Easter--which for me is a story of how G*d wanted so deeply to understand how hard it was to be human that G*d became human in the humblest of circumstances, tried to teach people how to be good to each other and was reviled and killed for his troubles--deeply reassuring. It makes me feel like G*d or the universe or whatever really does understand how hard it is to be human and try to be good. We don't really spend it with family in the traditional sense. We don't really even buy much in the way of gifts but we love it. We've found a way to make it our own and make it one of our favorite times of year.

Anyway, I'm hoping other people will share stories of how they have made this time of year something they can enjoy and treasure. And I guess maybe I hope some of the people out there who hate this time of year will give some thoughts to how they might be able to come to peace with it and make it something of their own that they could treasure.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Everyone have a happy December!