Category Archives: Personal Life

I stopped celebrating Christmas a long time ago for reasons that are hard to condense into a single blog post, but there are still some things that I appreciate about this holiday.

With the twenty-fifth of December rapidly approaching, I thought it would be fun to talk about my favorite parts of this time of year in today’s blog post.

The Feasts

I love food like mashed potatoes with gravy, pumpkin pie, and devilled eggs. My mom would make all of this stuff alongside a lot of other delicious things for the big holidays.

We usually ate simple, one-pot meals throughout the rest of the year, so it was fun to sit down to something fancier at Christmas.

There are also plenty of snacks and treats that are only available for a short time during the year.

For example, my dad would buy the same kinds of German cookies and hard candies that his mother used to buy for him when he was growing up.

I’ve continued that tradition as an adult. It makes me feel connected to my grandmother even though we didn’t share many years together on this planet.

The Lights and Decorations

This is a dark, dreary time of year for the northern hemisphere. Ontario gets about 9 hours of daylight per day in December, but other places further north that get far fewer hours of sunshine than that. There are even towns where the sun doesn’t rise at all for weeks or months at a time.

(I don’t know about you, but I could never live in one of them!)

Christmas trees and holiday decorations in general make me smile because of this. It feels good to see so much extra light indoors.

Even the cheesy ones can be fun. There is definitely something to be said for putting in the effort to cheer up a public place regardless of what form it takes.

The candles, lightbulbs, and other festive baubles remind me that this season never lasts forever.

We will have warm, sunny days again even though it sometimes feels like the cold will never end.

The Time with Loved Ones

One of the few things I dislike about living in Toronto is that it means I live far away from my extended family.

I’m lucky to have good relationships with my parents, siblings, and other close relatives. We pack in as many visits as everyone’s budgets and workplaces allow, but I always wish we could spend more time together.

The holidays remind me of how far away we live from each other.

When we’re apart during them, it’s nice to have a call to see how everyone is doing.

If we were penguins, it would look a little something like this. While the adults catch up on grown-up stuff, the little ones always manage to wiggle into the middle of the action to see what’s going on.

I’m amused by every single minute of it.

These are the things I carried with me once I stopped celebrating Christmas and started jokingly referring to the special meals I made as Festivus dinner instead. I wouldn’t give up any of these things I enjoy for anything in the entire world.

Regardless of what you’re celebrating or will be celebrating soon, I hope your days will be filled with light, love, and plenty of heavenly things to eat.