I read back posts from past Christmases this morning as I thought about this year's Christmas celebrations. So far, we've already had a number of great celebrations.
Sister weekend
My sister, myself, and our husbands spent a fun day and evening in Boston. We had a great brunch, attended the wonderful Cirque de Soleil show, walked a lot through the quaint, decorated streets of Boston, and stayed in a converted-warehouse hotel that had a welcoming decor in a great location. In addition, my brother had a party that included skating and cheer with many friends and family. It was a festive start to the holiday season.
Decorations
We visited a beautiful tree farm on a rainy day, chose a nice tree, cut it down, brought it home, and decorated with little white lights, white, translucent beads, gold garland, ornaments, and a quilted deep red tree skirt. We put candles in the windows, lights on the railing, decorations above the door, and a wreath on the outside of the door. Downstairs we lit up the mantle and added my husband's mom's old fake tree - I call that the children's tree since it is covered with colorful lights and more child-like ornaments. Someday I may decorate that tree with grandchildren. The holidays are a good time to clean up the home as well.
Family/Friends' Women's Party
My cousin hosted the women's party this year in her beautiful home. It was great to relive our childhood memories of wonderful family parties as we shared delicious foods, a Yankee Swap, and good cheer.
Neighbors and Friends
We've had a few get togethers with neighbors and friends as well. We also enjoyed our neighbor's delicious homemade cookies and exchanged a few gifts.
Christmas Eve
We'll have an intimate family celebration with our a few of our closest family members. We delivered a basket of goodies to family members who couldn't make the celebration due to COVID, and we sent a photo to family members who were traveling. We chose an intimate Italian restaurant in Boston's North End for our celebration which was wonderful. Later we exchanged a few gifts by the tree while we enjoyed dessert at home.
Christmas Day
We hosted our usual Christmas Day party for my side of the family--we shared appetizers and dinner, exchanged gifts in many ways including a book swap and Yankee swap, sang a few songs with karaoke, and conversed.
This year's appetizers included a selection of nuts, cheeses, and crackers - simple, but good.
Dinner had a lot of dishes which made for a big clean up, but the food was good including ham, caesar salad, veggie shepherd's pie, butternut squash, baked beans, mom's mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, kale chopped salad, rolls, cheese bread, mustard, pickles, relish, olives, green beans almondine, and a feta veggie bake.
We had a big table set up that fit all but a few--next year I hope to get a more accurate count of whose coming and perhaps have another table ready to add on so everyone can sit down together--we'll see.
For desserts, there was a large assortment of cookies and candy, ice cream, pie, and a buche de noel cake. Drinks ranged from soft drinks to sparkling juices to wine, beer, mixed drinks, water, and coffee.
The Yankee swap included a number of nice gifts, while the book swap got a bit shortchanged this year. Next year a couple of nieces agreed to organize that, and we'll do that before the Yankee swap right after dinner. We had the swap downstairs this year, but as a loved one suggested, we'll move it back upstairs next year in closer range to the desserts.
All in all, people brought good cheer during our first Christmas without Mom, and we were all there to support each other and Dad too--that was very good.
More friends
The days following Christmas we'll connect with a few more friends in special ways.