happy Advent :)

It seems that our society is so very quick to rush into “it’s time for the holidays!! Hurry up and get ready! Time to buy buy buy!!!” The stores push it on us immediately after Halloween. They want to make money, so I guess that’s their prerogative; if holiday items are out earlier, they are more likely to sell more of them.

I have also noticed this “hurry to Christmas!” phenomenon has been infiltrating regular life outside of the stores. Recently, I’ve heard either through some blogs I read or postings on facebook about this idea of finishing up nearly all Christmas prep before December 1. This includes all shopping, wrapping, Christmas card writing, decorating, and some of the baking. As I started seeing people talk about having all these things done, my reaction was “huh? I’m nowhere near that point! Is everyone really that much more organized than me?”

But. The thing is, I really like Christmas. I like all the tradition stuff that comes with it – decorating with pretty sparkly red and green, baking favorite cookies, picking out gifts for my family and friends. I like that it all feeds into this spirit of goodwill of Christmastime. And I like to do it all in the few weeks right before Christmas. I don’t really want to do it in November. Keeping it to a one-month period instead of a two month period seems to make it more special, to me. Does that actually mean that I’m disorganized?


I have had moments in past years where it’s a couple of days before Christmas and I still need to buy a few more gifts and wrap them all and make that cookie recipe I really wanted to try, oh and I still need to pack everything and then drive 8 hours through snowy weather to my parents’ house. Those times were a bit stressful, and I think I’d prefer to avoid similar situations if I can. This means doing some things in advance. For the first time ever, I actually finished about half of my Christmas shopping over this past Thanksgiving weekend. It does feel pretty nice to have a lot of it out of the way. And there were a lot of good deals. But overall I think I want to just take it slow with the Christmas stuff. Started a bit this weekend, and I’ll keep going a bit at a time, so that it doesn’t get to an overwhelming point.

It just seems that rushing around like all these things are just items to check off on a to-do list takes all the fun away from it. I want it to be “I’m so excited to do x y z” instead of “I have to do x y z”. And I think that’s where I am now. I’m looking forward to Christmas coming and all that it entails, but nope, I haven’t bought my Christmas cards yet; haven’t put up the tree, or dug out the decorations from storage yet; have bought a few gifts but still have some more to think about; haven’t wrapped or baked anything, either (except for Thanksgiving pumpkin cookies, that is!). I am excited to do all of it, though!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, meaning it’s the start of the Catholic pre-Christmas preparatory period. I went to church and just completely soaked up the traditional songs and the bible readings of the season, and they are all about getting ready. But for Advent, getting ready means slowing down, and looking at our lives and how we are living them. I know some people really like starting everything early, and that’s cool – whatever works. For me, the slow route seems to work the best.. so slow it is :)