On Sloth and Cheer

My family* does not do holidays half-heartedly. And although we may actually start shopping over the summer (but we're not that sort of people), we never have anything done on time. Or rather we never have everything done on time. Boxes were sent to Germany air mail on December 9, but still didn't make it. I bought cookie ingredients Dec. 3 and mom has had nuts piled around for months, yet the first cookies either of us baked this year were spritz on the 23rd. Santa still visits and places piles of gifts (most of them practical items) under the tree. All of them are "wrapped". Some of the wrapping is a brown paper bag with a towel covering the gift, some is newspaper; one or two presents are always wrapped in a garbage bag. Christmas Eve always includes some sort of shopping frenzy, even if we're all "done".

The Mister and I each had a long list of things that need to be done over our break. As Colorado is the single longest stay on our winter road trip, we thought we'd accomplish them here. Neither of us have completed one. We've fallen into the holiday This is the point at which my original post, written on Dec. 26, trailed off. Right before I wrote the word "stupor" or "trap of comfort" or something of the like. Despite being a person who changed the table cloth three times for Christmas dinner (several of my mother's red table cloths are too orange to compliment the Christmas napkins and candles) for a meal that was only for the four of us, I couldn't make it through a blog post to explain why I hadn't done socializing when there was sitting around and watching it snow to do.

In any case, I have forgotten most of the original intent of this post. Perhaps it was to illustrate that I come by some of my split personality holiday craze naturally. I may envy my husband's lack of concern about gift giving or special occasion foods or most anything else associated with the holidays, but I would be truly sad without giving gifts and eating cookies and the great traditional forgetting to roast the chestnuts until they all have gone bad. But I think I will use the post for another purpose. To point out that just because I don't do things half-heartedly does not mean that I do them on time. Yes, a new year has started. No, I don't have a new theme or resolution yet**. But I will, don't you fret.

*By this I mean my parents and myself. The Mister is not the sort to mark annual celebrations with much ritual and Dianthus has yet to develop a holiday personality.

**Ideas have included gratitude, the letter J, the letter G, astronomy, noodles, dumplings and the like, the Solanaceae, the Jane Project, heat, spiders and the number 8. I would like to do a more serious art or music investigation, but know that that won't be happening this year. Ideas welcome.