Decking the Halls

No boughs of holly, though. Or mistletoe or pointsettas. Or even a Christmas tree for that matter. We are having a completely non-toxic, toddler-friendly Christmas.

On a tight budget, too, since in the midst of moving, there is little surplus money, and considerably less surplus time. I've had lights up for a while, but other than that, my Christmas decorating pretty much started yesterday, when it finally dawned on me that it was time to give up trying to go home for Christmas, and start bringing Christmas home to us.

Which means that I've had no choice but to make everything very simple and streamlined. Unable to carry out all the traditional particulars, I've been distilling them down to their essences. The results, in my opinion, are surprisingly elegant and festive.

A tree is the single most important element of Christmas decorating. When you have toddlers, it is also a recipe for lots and lots of stress. The tree fills two main functions. It provides a center around which the festivities can gather, and it fills the room with its pungent fragrance.

So I bought a kid-friendly stuffed manger scene, and set it up the pile of boxes. I draped the boxes with blankets. White on the lower level looks a bit like snow, and midnight blue on the upper level makes a glorious sky, especially when speckled with the starlight provided by a little battery operated mini-light set.

Of course the wuggies dismantle everything, but that's okay. We sit down and join them in playing with it, and then put it away. It's easy enough to set up, and take down, and set up again.

As far as the smell goes, I went down to the tree lot on the corner, and brought home a bunch of discarded branches. I've been fashioning them into really beautiful little arrangements with pinecones and ribbons. It smells really wonderful in here. There certainly isn't a whole tree's worth of greenery in here, but there really does seem to be a whole tree's worth of smell, since all the branches have been broken off, and are releasing their wonderfully fragrant sap.

And some wassail simmering in the crock-pot makes up for the fact that I'm not doing any holiday baking.

We'll go to the midnight mass tonight, and, depending on our level of exhaustion, gather around the manger scene when we get home, and open presents. I'm hoping that the disruption to our usual schedules will make it all very exciting and festive. Either that or grumpy. We'll see.

In any case, I'm very excited about instituting our own family's brand new Christmas traditions. And I think that the very spur-of-the-momentness of it is sparking a lot of creativity.

I still very much wish that I could be with my family right now, but this is good. Very good.