festive_feeling tender_square when i lived alone, i never decorated for the holidays. i didn't see the point of having to store objects and ornaments that were only used once per year. christmas-related events would happen at my parents and other people's houses who had decorated anyway. with my first husband, he wanted a tree in our place and i agreed because it made him happy. with my second husband, we didn't have a tree for several years. neither one of us really felt that it was necessary with all the traveling we had to do to see his family and mine. but when we lived on our own in ohio, we went to the meijer in our town and bought a waif of an evergreen. and i began to understand the significance of a symbol during periods of duress. we were struggling to be in a new state of living and a new state of mind. those twinkle lights became a beacon against the darkness we felt surrounding us. we were isolated, but we were together, untangling beaded garland and handling glass globes that could shatter in an instant. now i'm on my own again, and i don't have any article to mark the season, to slay the shortness of the days, no boughs to hold the worries i carry, nothing beautiful to counteract what's decrepit and dying. 221212 ... past growing up, my mother's family had very strict and formal traditions in that particular mainline protestant, WASP, and class striving way. everything was formal and staid. reacting against it, i grew up in a house overflowing with festive chaos. two trees (one for store bought ornaments, one for homemade), candy on display with intricate rules for accessing it, big chaotic dinner prep (which has left me able to run a kitchen and make a full feast from scratch). i'd love to react against that by toning it down a bit. finding the core that makes me happy and relaxed: lights on the house (which i'd like to make a bit more extravagant every year), one tree with whatever we want to put on it, a big dinner with whoever can make it. but families are joint initiatives. her family didn't care for holidays. they were a striving working class family that, when it was dissolved in a messy divorce, was actually quite wealthy. but without the trappings of the respectable middle class that my grandparents wrapped themselves in. so, she wants to draw more from my childhood, from hallmark movies, from expectations others broadcast on instagram and other photo websites. it can be very stressful trying to be "just so." it's a tension, but we're trying to make it work. 221213 ... tender_square my mother didn't have extra decorations to lend, and i mentioned that i planned to shop after the season passed, in the hopes of finding deals to prepare for next year. we kissed goodbye; she headed to wal-mart, and i went for a walk with a friend. when i returned to the house a short while later, she wasn't far behind. "i just poured the last of the coffee," i said. "should i make more?" "i'm just here for a minute, i came to bring you this." she pulled out a small silver sparkle tree on a square metal base. "something small to get you started." it takes three alkaline batteries to light. 221214 ... past yesterday we had latkes. today, i'm making stollen (which apparently is supposed to sit for weeks?!? after being baked, who has the self control for that?). 221221 ... tender_square yesterday took several sticks of butter and countless cups of flour and sugar, a whole bottle of imitation vanilla, too many egg embryos. i managed to make chocolate chip shortbread, millionaire shortbread, burnt butter tarts (see "rookie_mistake"), and the batter for chocolate chip and butterscotch oatmeal cookies. there are still macaroons to make, and lemon loaf to lift. 221221 ... tender_square erin always paints a solstice party ornament with the year to commemorate her annual gathering of the girls. i had been hiding them on the back of the tree, along with annaliese's gnome ("i stayed gnome 2020"). this year, jackie made a glass bulb full of artificial moss; i looped a piece of ribbon katy attached to her sugared orange slices through the cap to hang it. before i left the house he and i used to share and celebrated our final christmas, i packed my ornaments with me and hung every one on the silver metal branches of the tabletop tree my mother gave me weeks ago. 221226 what's it to you? who go blather from