Mr G and I hosted our holiday open house this past Saturday...and we had a lovely time...but I'm not sure we'll do it again next year...the pressure to get Number 17 even sorta dressed for the holidays by the first Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving was a little much...
and what is it about having an open house that makes absolutely everybody (except for 2 lone souls who arrived about 1/2 of an hour early...but they're family so...) arrive within about 30 minutes of one another?...
made it absolutely impossible to see to each guest as much as I would have liked...and to keep the Men Folk from slipping off to check the Ga Tech game score...
I think we're going to have to come up with something different for next year...maybe a series of small potluck dinners...in January...after all the holiday pressures have moved on for another year (at least until Groundhog Day rolls around and all that craziness gets started)...time to sit, have some ordinary and yet still good food, maybe a glass of beautiful red wine...just talk...relax...
maybe that will be our new tradition: Potluck in January...or maybe even February...a lot of people I know are still wiped out physically, emotionally and financially in January...
we've gotten better about not turning the Holiday Season into All About Fripperies and Frenzies...but it took a long while for us to back down off that ledge...
used to, I'd be decorating the house right up until Christmas Eve (not Christmas Eve Day...Christmas Eve...)...wrapping last minutes presents I bought when I eyeballed the already-wrapped stack and thought there just wasn't enough! ...trying to create the Perfect Christmas...and never quite clearing that bar...
then came the freeing day when I realized there is no such thing as the Perfect Christmas...only bits of perfection tucked here and there amongst the Running Family Feuds/Disagreements, Overeating (and subsequent mental hair shirt wearing ) and Overspending...and the bits of perfection would be a whole lot easier to come across and savour if one didn't have to do all that fumbling about in the Muck for them...
ah, the sweet realization that pursuing Perfection is futile...and draining...
anyhoo...one unexpected benefit of having the open house so early is that the rest of the holiday season feels like a cake walk...no pressure...almost all of the gifts are wrapped and ready for gifting...the halls are as decked as they are gonna get decked...a little recreational baking may take place next week...but if that doesn't pan out, I'm more than happy to pass out the Claxton Fruitcakes instead of home baked biscotti and blue cheese wafers...
the season has appreciably slowed down...
and I like that...
the slow-down has given me time to start thinking past the holidays...what do I hope to find myself doing in 2007? I'd like to find just a couple of things that have been tucked away in my heart for a while, shake off the dust and see what they look like in the light of 2007...
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