Breather

Thanksgiving is over. Time for that other holiday to move in and set up residence everywhere. But not here, not just yet.
I love Christmas, I truly do. The colors, the songs, cheery fires popping in a fireplace while that Christmas tree holds court in a quiet corner. I am just not quite ready yet. I like to have a week or two of just plain old December. I like to feel the year winding down, quietly and slowly, sinking past. I like to play George Winston and have afternoons of cutting and gluing paper chains. I like to let anticipation build. I like to let my children sit back and have a  bit of normalcy this time of year.
I don't like to march right from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I like a little breather before the magic takes hold and lifts us up into the ethers, never letting us down until we land breathless and exhausted on the shores of a new year.
So we will take a breather. No tree yet, no snowmen yet. No cookies to bake, not quite this soon.
But in a week or two?
I will fling our door wide open and invite Christmas into this home. We will decorate and bake and talk endlessly of Santa and his magic elves, we will carefully plan out what to leave the Dwarves that dwell in our basement and run our furnaces (they really like beer and cheese). We will arrange visits with family coming from afar. We will meet new cousins and play new games with cousins we have known for years.
We will watch the face of a little boy opening his first Christmas presents ever. We will enjoy our daughter and her initial shyness and reluctance to disturb those precious packages shining under a fragrant evergreen.
For now though, we will experience early December in regular, every day ways.
Soon though....