I Can Take a Break Now

I am so ahead of schedule it isn't even funny.

Half the cards are printed and cut -- ready for folding.

The other half will be printed maybe later today (the new cardstock supply that I ordered yesterday has already arrived -- I thought it might take longer, buying me a little more time to procrastinate).

All the envelopes are addressed and separated by destination category.

The chocolates have been ordered.

The house is clean (OK, only cuz the cleaning lady came today but what's your point?)

Christmas will not be "put up" until two weeks from now -- the next time the cleaning lady comes.  I prefer to wait 'til she's done her rounds and then make the mess (silly, I know, but there IS a good reason for my doing it that way).  As I said in an earlier post, I don't put up a tree, preferring now to assemble my village.

This is my village when I first started building it.
It has grown considerably since this photo was taken.

I've never liked decorating a tree and always said that if I had my druthers, I'd have put the tree up on Christmas Eve and taken it down on Boxing Day.  When you have children, of course, you can't be so scrooge-like.  When my little chickadee was young, she would be on my case from mid-November about putting up that darned thing!  It was all I could do to hold her off until the 10th of December (that was our 'compromise' date).  BUT it came down on Boxing Day along with all other evidence of Christmas, with the exception of our Creche.

The Creche has to remain in place until the 6th of January ("Little Christmas") and, although I no longer have any little ones in the home, I still to this day re-enact the story of Christmas.  Mary and Joseph only arrive on December 24th; the baby doesn't join them until the next morning and the shepherd doesn't get there until the baby has arrived. The three Wise Men are moved ever closer along the path toward the manger until they finally arrive on the 6th of January.

And only then can everything be packed up and put away until the following year.

I've done this every year since my little chickadee was, well, very little, because I wanted her to understand the true meaning of Christmas.  We weren't a religious household, per se, but I taught her many "rules to live by."

One Christmas, when my little chickadee was about seven years old I think, I had already put her to bed for the night when she came running downstairs in a flap.  She just had to take care of something very important.  We had carefully placed Mary and Joseph in the manger that afternoon, the couple having ceremoniously arrived and been refused a place at the inn (yes, we went the whole nine yards).  Anyway, she came running downstairs and beelined for the Creche.  She gently took Mary and laid her down, explaining, "She's going to have a baby tonight you know."  Then she promptly went back upstairs to bed. It just cracked me up!

Every year since and still, when I close up the house on Christmas Eve, I just HAVE to lay Mary down because she's going to have a baby that night you know!

The Creche I use today is the one I bought the year of my little chickadee's third Christmas and it is very special to me.  It's really starting to show its age now but you can't find ones like it anymore.  It is very much like the one my mother had when I was growing up.  Now, my beautiful boy gets to re-enact the story of Christmas and he loves to move the wise men closer, just as his mother did when she was his age.

I still leave the Creche set up until January 6th but almost always have taken the rest of Christmas down long before then.

Sometimes I think John must think I'm a regular nut bar (OK maybe not just John).