Christmas. Because we're grown-ups now...

[flexagon]

...and it's our turn to decide what that means.

Most of you know that I do a quiet Christmas, for the most part, and a playful atheist one at that. We do get a tree (pagan, dammit!) and we decorate it with white lights (for the bug) and mostly white/glass/jewel-tone ornaments (for me) and get an accidental elegance that neither of us would probably achieve alone. We do stockings and presents and no religion at all, and we hang out at home building / reading / listening to our gifts and then at some point I take a nap, and we cook something half-decent for dinner (this year, lobster tails) and we leave the mess around for the cats to play in until the next day.

So this year's theme ended up being marble runs. We got a giant plastic set too, but yesterday was all about building the "roller coaster" marble run from here out of wood, and it was four hours of pure satisfaction. It fit together well, the instructions were great, no pieces were missing, the thing WORKS and omggggggg. Yeah. My inner mechanical engineer loved that, and it was good doing-something-together time with the bug which I think I really need occasionally.

A Zoom call with his family and a few texts/chats with Norwood and other friends, and I am perfectly content with the day. Especially in THIS context... 2020... you know. And especially given how stressed out I was last year at Christmas by a brand of nonsense that is now obsolete. It was our first year without Nala, and I did miss her at nap-time when she should have been curled in my lap, but I'm at peace with her story.

We cooked lobster tails and those, too, came out good. Easy and quick. Would cook tails again.

I am loving everyone else's holiday stories too (with special shout-out to the unidentified person who did suspension bondage in front of a fireplace, because hell yeah).

Comments

[cordjostler]

The marble run sounds fun!

I like the make your own tradition thing. I've been struggling with having excised all the standard traditions and being left feeling kind of empty.

[flexagon]

If you don't like any of the Xmas stuff, might it make sense to re-center around either solstice or NYE?

There are a lot of good traditions to choose from related to both of those, most centered around rebirth and new possibilities.

My friend is doing a bonfire on NYE in which people are able to burn (symbols of) things they don't want to bring with them from 2020... that seems awesome and, goddamn, I hope she's planning a big fire.

[cordjostler]

Solstice was a thought. I can certainly get into being thankful that the days wont get any shorter. I think the biggest struggle for me is establishing/celebrating these things on my own.. which I think is something that I'm just going to have to figure out.