In my mind, I'm late.
I wanted the tree up on Nov. 1.
JD said he'd put it up on the weekend....
OR if I could drag it up from the basement myself, I could put it up earlier.
My
back
hurts
so
much!
But the tree is up.
1. I put the tree up early because I enjoy all the things about the Holidays. Big and small. And they seem to get compressed into a short time frame and become stressful. I don't want to be someone who stresses over putting up the tree. I mean - there are real things to stress about.
2. Christmas decorations do not make me less thankful at Thanksgiving. In fact, at this moment I am very thankful to have my tree up.
3. I don't put it up early to make other people feel badly. If someone is a bit ridiculous here, it is me. (I embrace my ridiculousness.) And it isn't braggie, like "Look at me, I'm winning on the race of getting things done." I just talk about it because I am excited. And when I am excited about something, it is hard to shut me up. (A task some would argue is hard to do even when I am not excited.)
4. I have found that I have let Jesus' birth take a backseat to the holiday-ness of Christmas some years. I get so busy that it isn't until I am picking up wrapping paper on Dec. 26th. that I realize the absurdity of focusing on the ephemeral in place of the eternal. By taking 1 thing off my mental Christmas to do list a day, I leave my mind less cluttered as I approach Christmas. For me, this helps me to focus more on Christ's birth and less on having cute ribbons on packages.
