Christmas is what you make of it

Happy Holidays from Team Smelkins!

We don't have a kitty, but we put a stocking up for the kitty
we hope to have some day in the future!

Is it Christmas already?! The holidays don't feel as if they even began because they weren't ushered in by the intense amount of family togetherness that I am used to being surrounded by this time of year. Ignoring my opinion on the subject, decorations and presents found their way to the Pacific Northwest and the holiday cheer snuck into our apartment. Honestly, I'm grateful for the care packages that ninja-ed their way into our apartment because it eases the strange heartache I feel about not spending Christmas engulfed by my insane family traditions.

The sight that greets you when you walk in our front door!

Cinnamon scented pine cones! Cinnamon is the best scent of the holidays season.

Reindeer towels & oven mitts (not pictured)

Jingly snow man door hanger

Our Christmas-tree-shaped rosemary plant sunning itself on the window sill!

Christmas presents! Hooray!!!

Christmas presents under our rosemary tree!

Tomorrow (Christmas day) Matt and I will open the presents we've received. Afterwards we're going to watch Home Alone and bake homemade pizza with sausage and zucchini.  For desert we will gorge ourselves on ice cream and the chocolate pumpkin spice cake I baked recently.

Thanks google images

Our plans are no more complicated than that. In the evening, I might wrap the presents we bought for our friends and family just because it seems like such a strange thing to do on Christmas day!

I am excited to start new traditions during our first married Christmas season and to make relaxation & togetherness our #1 priority. This year has been such an incredible and eventful year for us and I am happy to entertain an uneventful holiday season. 

Christmas is what you make of it and this year, it's all about the low key love.

The following is a reading from a small group I participate in that I would like to share with you.

 "Sometimes it's hard to know what to make of Christmas. It seems to have such a multitude of meanings.

Is it only a punctuation mark in the change of the season and the turning of the years?

Or is it only a chance to discover amidst the frenzied, frantic busyness of our lives, a time of stillness and quiet and rest?

Or is it only an excuse to celebrate a little, to indulge ourselves a little, in the abundance of the season -- food and drink and music and gifts shared with family and friends?

Or is it only an evil plot by corporations to keep us forever trapped in a vicious cycle of getting and spending on things we neither truly need nor want?

Or is it only a time to carry on family traditions, whether those traditions still mean much to us or not, because they reconnect us with our childhoods, our families, and all those who have come before us?

Or is it only a time, when the world around us seems cold and barren, to celebrate what is best within the human spirit -- our capacity for love, concern and generosity, not only for friends and family, but for all humankind, especially those who may not share in our abundance?

Or is it only a time when we affirm, that as the sun just began its return on the longest, darkest nights of the year, that there is hope for our own lives and our world even during the darkest times of our lives, a time when we remind ourselves of this hope by decorating everything around us with light, a time when we affirm with our effort that perhaps one day there will be peace on earth and goodwill toward all?

Or is it only a time when we celebrate in story and song the birth of a child born as a savior to his people, a child not born to royalty, but to humble parents in humble beginnings, reminding us in a different way that salvation comes unexpectedly in the unlikeliest of times and in the unlikeliest of places and that love must become incarnate to become real?

Or is it something completely else?"

-- Reverend James Kubal-Komoto, Saltwater Church