WITH LESS THAN three weeks until Christmas, I truly need to pull myself out of my pre-holiday funk.
Here’s the deal. I haven’t sent out a single Christmas card, although the annual holiday letter has been drafted and awaits final editing.
I haven’t baked Christmas cookies. I don’t need the sweets and the guys in the house don’t have a sweet tooth. Eventually I’ll bake the cream cheese roll-out cookies that have been part of my Christmas since childhood. And I’ll pull together some date pinwheels for my husband, part of his childhood tradition.
No presents in my sleigh yet.
As for shopping, the lists have been compiled. But since I dislike shopping, the task looms before me.
Decorations? If you count the holiday painting by my father-in-law hanging in the dining room, the six Christmas cards we’ve received and the peppermint candies in a dish, then, yes, I’ve started my decorating.
I’m not the type who goes all out with holiday decorating because, visually, I dislike clutter. I also live in a relatively small house.
Then there’s my husband, who worries about the Christmas tree drying out and creating a fire hazard (a legitimate concern) if we buy it “too early”. Once we waited so long to purchase a tree that we had five pathetic choices in the tree lot. We got a heckuva deal, though, by buying only days before Christmas. True story.
So there you have it. I am feeling more Grinch-like than holiday-ish. For me, the important part of Christmas lies in celebrating Christ’s birth and in gathering with family.
Gathering with family...one of the most important aspects of Christmas for me.
I expect therein exists the partial reason for my melancholy. My second daughter, who lives in eastern Wisconsin, will not be home for Christmas. She’s on-call both holiday weekends at her job as a Spanish medical interpreter. She has missed Christmas before, while living in Argentina. So I should be used to this. I am not.
I have no right to complain. None. Many families are separated by greater distances or war or illness or death, or even by choice.
Eventually I’ll pull myself out of my holiday blues. Perhaps I’ll start with addressing Christmas cards and work my way up to mixing cookie dough. The shopping, though, I never have been able to embrace no matter how hard I try.
Although I'm struggling right now to pull everything together for Christmas, I will. Here's the complete holiday painting by my father-in-law, Tom Helbling of St. Cloud, MN.
SO…WHERE ARE YOU at with your holiday preparations? Do you struggle with any aspect of preparing for Christmas? Submit a comment and share.
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
I hear you! Though I have finished my shopping, we aren’t decorating because we won’t be here for Christmas or New Year’s! But I still need to make some cookies for a cookie exchange, but I am afraid of making them to soon before next Friday for fear of them getting eaten! It will come….
Precisely the reason I limit the baking to the two cookies. I don’t want these sweets in the house tempting me.
I also hear you! I just cannot get into the “holiday mode” this year either! No tree up, only 2 nativity sets up and virtually no shopping done. The cookies I baked for the cookie exchange all got taken and the ones I brought home-almost gone! Christmas letter is written, but no cards sent either! I am hoping maybe this weekend-but it’s filling up too! Oh well, it is what it is! Remember the reason for the season!
Crunch time is on. I, too, am hoping for a productive weekend in the holiday prep department. And, yes, the reason for the season will not become lost amid all the expectations.
I would like to hear about your cream cheese cookies though, they sound interesting.. c
Well, C., I’m not surprised you expressed an interest in the cream cheese roll-out cookies. Follow this link for the recipe: https://mnprairieroots.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/cream-cheese-roll-out-cookies-a-christmas-tradition/
The key here is rolling the dough as thin as possible and a short baking time. Let me know how they turn out. This is the only “sugar cookie” type recipe I make because of the delectable flavor. I find regular sugar cookies bland and tasteless.
I’ve finished shopping and have started wrapping and shipping. No decorating, though. No plans to go anywhere. Tons of volunteering plans, which will be nice and a way to give something different in this season of giving. I felt more in the spirit a couple of weeks ago in Vienna – snow, Christmas markets, beautiful music – but I’m working on it.
Volunteering, something you’re quite good at Kristin. That approach is definitely worth emulating.
Audrey,
Well, we have had our “fake” tree up since Thanksgiving and all the other decorating is done. We aren’t even going to be home for Christmas, but did it for Meghan. Cookies will be baked next weekend. We’ve had quite a few holiday parties in the past week. Cards should be going out sometime this week since we finally got the pictures back.
By the way, can you please email the date pinwheel cookie recipe? Is this one Betty used to make?
Thanks.
I should take holiday prep lessons from you, dear niece. When the kids were all still home, I certainly had decorations up earlier, although not the tree.
I now have about half of my Christmas cards sent and most of my shopping finished.
No baking done yet, although that will be minimal. The date pinwheel cookie recipe is not Grandma Betty’s. I’ve sent it your way, though.