Decking the halls with a toddler
finding the magic in shifting traditions
ICYMI:
published my essay in their Winter Collection. You can read my essay, “Fading Scars,” right here. Thank you to everyone reading and sharing my work! This is the first time I’ve shared online about a piece of my health journey that’s unfolding offline. & her team gave my story a soft place to land, and I’m so grateful.
It took us exactly one hour to deck our halls, enough time for a dusting of glitter to shimmer on the hardwoods that my husband promptly vacuumed. It felt like a tired race this year. My son was asleep, my mother-in-law was visiting but needed to get home, my husband had to pack his bags for a work trip. Me? It was 8pm and it was clear that I was ready for bed when I turned the stocking hooks around and upside down in my twisting mind, contemplating how to hang them for far too long.
No Rudolf or Elf. No Jingle Bells or I’ll Be Home for Christmas. No Hallmark country inn romances in the background. Lots of yes, no, this there, no that there, forget that this year.
We even skipped the ornaments.
Childproofing started in our house several years before we had a kid. When you have cats who shovel egg shells out of garbage disposals and dive bomb into chocolate cakes on the counter and, yes, climb Christmas trees like all those memes, you invest in locks to keep them out of the cabinet above the fridge filled with glass breakables. You also rethink Christmas decorations that involve jingly bells and shiny tinsel and fire hazards. We have enough ceramic snowmen with missing noses and severed limbs to tell their tales of being swatted and carried through the trenches.
(This is not our cat. But, believe me, it could be.)
Look, this year we’re 8 days into December and our stockings have already been filled with pneumonia, bronchitis, croup, UTIs, pink eye, fevers, ear infections, and enough snot to bring the house down. Do we really need to add a trip to the ER for swallowing an ornament hook or stepping on a shattered bulb? No, the answer is NONONO.
Also, there’s this: We are a fake tree family. Please hold your judgement because let me just tell you a little story about our first year together as a married couple. My husband transformed into that Hallmark hunk, chopping down a tree at the local farm like every great burly man with a beard and flannel. We loved that tree. We delicately hung every ornament in the perfect spot (you know when there’s just enough but not too much space between bulbs and that color blend hits just right), we passed each other the light strands in a swaying dance as we sang our carols in unison, we watered it nightly like it was our first precious child.
And then one dark morning following that blissful Christmas, I called my husband on his way to the office, “Turn around. Come home immediately. You won’t believe it.”
Spiders. Hundreds possibly thousands or millions and billions of spider eggs. All. Over. Our. Home.
This is the exact moment when we became a fake tree family, forever and ever and ever until the good Lord returns.
And guess what? My son woke up this year the day after our “late night” (8pm) fake tree decorating and I held his little hand and said, “Buddy, come here, let me show you something!” You should have seen the magic sparkle in his eyes. A tree! With lights! And they change from white to rainbow and blink in various life-changing patterns that will just blow your mind! (Or give you a seizure if you look too closely.)
As a new parent, there’s an incredible amount of self-imposed pressure to establish our family traditions that will stay in place for generations to come. We have to find the magic and then write down the recipe and repeat it every single year with the same dashes of cinnamon and cheer.
If we just google, “how to make the holidays perfect,” surely we’ll find all the answers, right?
I’m kidding, of course, but also, I’m not. How many of us are trying to frantically concoct unforgettable magic that will blow their little minds? That they’ll remember for the rest of their lives and write home about when they’re 21 and broke and lonely and craving a dash of that cheer that warmed their hearts?
This year, my son is one years old. Yes, he will engage in Christmas more than last year when we dressed him up as a bald Santa with a milk belly and propped him on a Dock-a-Tot for everyone to gather round to sing ohhhh and ahhhh. But there’s more than enough magic in our fake tree with flashing lights and no ornaments to feel the joy of the season.
When he knows how to sit still and stay up past 6:45pm without a major meltdown, then we can walk in our PJs to the end of the lane to wave to Santa on the fire truck. Those days will come. We can shift our traditions as our family changes. We can deck our halls differently with toddlers, tweens, and teens, and I bet they won’t write home when they’re old and grown to complain about the year we skipped the ornaments in favor of ease and safety.
So, if you needed it, here’s your permission slip to try something new this holiday season. And then next year, switch it up. Call it the tradition of change.
“But time has a way of dulling the lackluster memories, and when I scroll the photos of years past on my phone, all I feel is delight…
I don’t know what my memories of this year’s Christmas tree hunt—this holiday season—will look like. Maybe they’ll be tainted with the sorrow of the past few months or full of regret that this year isn’t different.
But maybe they’ll also be splashed with magic and delight.”
-
, “Oh Christmas Tree”
Give these a try…
Christmas: Toddler Edition
Granny (my young mother who desperately doesn’t want to be called Granny) found this felt Christmas tree and snowman two-pack with felt ornaments that toddlers can easily stick on. Granny and Poppy have the snowman at their house and we are still saving the tree to decorate at our house on a snowy/rainy/boring inside day.
Try a different Advent calendar each year. (Or not. As
shared in her essay, she’s filling their Advent calendar with chocolate. It’s simple. It works every year. Who doesn’t like chocolate?) In true toddler fashion, we’re using this cars Advent calendar (also supplied by Granny!). My son begs for his new car daily. He puts it in his mouth. It’s tiny. We pull it out of his mouth. He cries. Repeat daily. Ha… so it’s not a tradition we’ll repeat next year, but, hey!, he likes cars this year and can play with the tiny car for a few minutes before trying to inhale it.This Instagram reel is pretty perfect. Wrap up water bottles, remote controls, keys, Tupperware… everything your toddler truly loves. I’ve already had a few conversations with my husband that he should set low expectations for the magic of Christmas morning this year. I bought some toys at a Tot Swap a while back that I hid (after my son was there to help pick them out) and I’ll wrap them up for my husband and I to unwrap on Christmas morning. Of course, we’ll hope that our son wants to open them, but he’s not quite wrapping his mind around gift wrap just yet. We’ll get there.
“Traditions hard-won, kept with purpose, glowing with delight.
Except for one. With every friend that has entered our home in the past two weeks, an eyebrow or two is raised. Colored lights? they’ll joke, asking the kids which one managed to talk their stickler mother into the change. No one is more surprised than me, I admit. But this is the year we untangled every cord of attic-stored lights to find that each white strand boasted an exact 50/50% ratio of working-to-burned-out bulbs. The colored lights for the kids’ room worked just fine, of course, and so, part of me caved in the name of efficiency and resourcefulness. But the other part? Sheer nostalgia. While I can’t say I’ll keep the tradition alive, I’ll admit – this one’s growing on me. Our living room is less calming, sure, but more festive. Less Oh Holy Night, more Rudolph the Reindeer.”
-Erin Loechner, latest essay for Design for Mankind
Love this! ❤️ 2 foot fake tree with stuffed ornaments this year! Thank you for making me feel better about it 🤣🎄