The past two Christmases my husband and I have spent Christmas by ourselves, meaning just the two of us. Our immediate and extended family members live between a 2 to 6 hour-drive away, but we prefer to keep this holiday simple and quiet and to ourselves. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have children yet, or it could be that in the past when we’ve spent it with family members, we really didn’t like how they celebrated the holiday. On one side of our family, Christmas has been reduced to tearing open gifts without barely looking at what they’ve just received, the emphasis is on how many gifts can one child receive. In contrast, on the other side of our family, Christmas is a minimalist holiday with heated family arguing throughout the evening (mostly between two select people, my brother and my step-father!)

We’ve talked extensively about how we want to cherish Christmas and celebrate it, especially once we have kids. We don’t want it to be primarily about gifts, we feel it’s better to receive one thoughtful gift rather than 20 silly, thoughtless gifts. But we also don’t want to be Scrooge’s and completely dismiss the holiday altogether. So, we’ve come up with our own celebration for now; keep it simple and special. The past couple of years, we’ve created our own traditions as follows:

• Make a tasty breakfast for two. My husband enjoys cooking and breakfast is his favorite meal. We normally don’t eat breakfast in the mornings together, so this is something special we do on this day.
• Open a few gifts to keep it festive. We still have a few gifts that we open Christmas morning. These gifts are sent to us by our family. We discuss the frivolity of them, or how thoughtful a particular gift was. Then, we watch our cats play with the wrapping paper and boxes, that is almost more fun. (We’re not complete Scrooge’s, we also send our families gifts as well!)
• Call our family members. This works out much better than actually seeing them on this particular holiday. We don’t have to witness the children whining and can truly enjoy talking to them over the phone. Also, my stepfather usually won’t argue with my brother while on the phone, so it’s a much more pleasant conversational atmosphere. I know this sounds awful, our family members are really great almost every other day of the year! However, Christmas brings out the worst in some people, especially in our families.
• Plan an outing for the day. A few times this has equated to going to the movies, sometimes we’ve taken a drive to the beach depending on the weather.
• Make a fantastic dinner. Again, my husband the cook usually plans a delicious meal and we top it off with some beverages, usually of the alcoholic type.

I’m hoping that once we purchase our little house in the valley, we’ll be able to host Christmas at our house in our own tradition, focusing on quality time spent together. In the meantime, we prefer to celebrate it alone and visit family and friends after this holiday.

For a short post on a long day, Happy Thanksgiving! What will I be doing today? Visiting my parents with my husband (grudgingly) and eating my mom’s fine cooking. Our day will be similar to many others: drive to our parent’s house a couple of hours away, converse and be thankful, take a walk around the neighborhood in the warm sun, eat dinner, eat pie! Finally, drive back home while discussing my crazy family. You gotta love crazy families! And some things I’m thankful for include:

• My wonderful husband (he makes sure I eat well and picks up my slack!)
• My crazy family (I have some great stories and wouldn’t be nearly as sane if it weren’t for the fact that they are so crazy!)
• My brain (I come up with creative ideas sometimes and have ah ha moments!)
• My friends and co-workers who are really supportive.
• A good year despite the fact that the rest of the country has struggled this  year, I have been lucky so far!

What are you thankful for this year?