It’s taken me just about 5 decades of my life to accept the fact that no matter how hard I try, I will always be “down to the wire” in getting ready for Christmas. There are only a certain number of hours in a day, a finite amount of funds, and limited extra hands to make the vision I have in my head of Christmas come to life each year. I know the majority of you R.W’s out there feel the same.

It’s not like we don’t know when Christmas is going to happen. My husband and I still laugh over the time he said “it snuck up on me this year.”  As soon as the leftover Thanksgiving turkey is consumed, the race is on. And as the days on the calendar slip by, it seems pressure builds.  I read an article this morning that indicated that nearly 142 million U.S. consumers plan to shop on the last Saturday before Christmas.  Which is only 2 days before the big event. Guess it snuck up on them too.  I assume this means that millions of folks will be up late wrapping those gifts.  Let’s hope they don’t plan to ship anything – we are all receiving notifications from the hard-working folks at Fed Ex, UPS and USPS that the “last day to ship” is…. well…. today — to be sure to be delivered “on time”.

One of my RW BFFs and I had the opportunity recently to tour some historic 19^th century homes all decked out for the holidays.  It was lovely, and of course caused us to have interesting conversations about what Christmas must have been like (especially for women) about 120 years ago.  Were things easier, simpler, and slower then?  Well, yes and no.  Celebrations were centered around religious observances, family togetherness and modest gift-giving.  Most common gifts were homemade, like baked goods, preserves and knitted scarves.  So that means that there were no hoards of people flocking to the malls on “Super Saturday” or trying to race around earlier in the month to get things purchased, wrapped and shipped.  But think about that.  Homemade gifts.  Those take time.  Lots of time. And sure, women in those days for the most part did not work outside of the home. But the home and family WAS their work.  They had no modern conveniences like we do now. Every chore, from meals to laundry to yardwork to animals, were all manual and slow.  So sure, let’s heap on making gifts to that To Do list.  I suppose with no tv or internet to waste time on, sitting in front of the fire at night and knitting sounds lovely – but think how exhausted that woman was.  Sound familiar?  

Décor was simpler too.  The one primary focal point was the Christmas tree, decked out in glass balls, tinsel, candy canes, and you guessed it – homemade accessories like paper or dried fruit or popcorn chains. In the early days, trees were lit with candles. So you could gather the family around the tree for a few hours on Christmas Eve to bask in the glow, praying the tree and home didn’t go up in flames.  I’m quite happy to have my plug-in timers in my house magically adding safe light, thank you very much. 

And the concept of a big holiday meal has been around for a very long time.  Imagine cooking that big meal with an oven and stove that were heated with wood and coal, and everything cleaned and polished by hand.  No microwave to reheat cooled green beans or a dishwasher to load up at the end of the night. And lord knows not everyone was wealthy with “downstairs staff” to take care of it all.  These days I kind of feel like I’m both the Mistress of the House AND the Downstairs Maid all rolled into one.

Did our grandmothers and great-grandmothers feel rushed this time of year?  Or did they plan well ahead, and what got done, got done.  Little Johnny only received one or two gifts, not ten.  There were no massive front yard displays to set up, no company secret santa gifts to purchase, no hurrying to UPS.  There were home parlor games and caroling, not big vacation trips or rushes to the mall to visit Santa.

My girlfriend and I agreed that if we could have a time-machine, we would have loved to have gone back briefly to that time and just sat quietly and watched.  Was great-grandma stressed?  Or was she just too focused on keeping the house warm and her family fed to worry about comparing her Christmas to anyone else’s?  Was she truly just happy having her family around her and putting popcorn strings on her tree?  Since religion played a big part of their celebrations, did they focus more on the full 12 days of Christmas so it didn’t really matter if something “wasn’t ready” by 6am on the 25^th?   Certainly there would be knit scarves or blankets that didn’t get done until days later.

Somewhere along the way over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a bit of an ah-ha moment.  I don’t have small children in the house anymore, and the majority of family & friends to whom we send gifts are adults (or young adults).  So what does it matter if I’m not totally “ready” by the evening of the 24^th?   Sure, I have some deadlines – like we are having some friends over next week so I’ll need to have the house clean and some food ready, we’ll be attending church on Christmas Eve, and I’d like to have some gifts wrapped and ready to open as my household lounges in our pjs on the 25^th.    But if I’m late getting some cookies done and distributed, or gifts are delayed getting mailed out or I’m tardy getting cards sent, is anyone going to say “oh, man, this doesn’t mean anything since it arrived on the 28^th” ?   If anything, I think extending the holiday is a nice plan.  Who doesn’t want a little boost after all the excitement has died down?

When I was young, my mom would shop throughout the year and hide gifts in a variety of places in the house.  Almost every year she would forget about a gift or two, and stumble upon it sometime after the new year.  She would triumphantly present it, saying “I forgot I got this for you!  Happy late Christmas!”  We would laugh and be delighted to get a little something extra.   I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that might be a good tradition to embrace.   

I can’t guarantee that I won’t be among those 142 million others who are out and about on the 23^rd; I’ll at the very least likely be at the grocery store.  I’m sure my husband will be out shopping because my theory is that at least 100M of those shoppers are men – but that’s a topic for another day.  In the meantime, I’m going to slow my roll and get done whatever can get done and still enjoy the lead up to the holiday.  I’ll be sure to spend a few nights sitting quietly by the tree, trying to channel the “simpler” days, thinking about my grandma and her mother.  There will be a few differences; the candle I light will be on a table, not in the tree, I’ll be in lounge wear, not a corset, I’ll be sipping cocoa that was heated up in the microwave, and I’ll be waiting for the last packages from Amazon to be dropped off at my doorstep.  

But otherwise it will be just like the old days.