I am a week late with this one, and for that I apologize. You all know we are in the midst of That Holiday Time of Year already. I wonder when it officially begins these days. I think when I was a kid, Holiday Season started the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and ended New Year’s Day. With Halloween becoming so popular in the past few decades, I think it marks the beginning of Holiday Season for many people.
It is right around Halloween that our Holiday Season begins here at my house, but not because of Halloween. The International Quilt Festival in Houston normally straddles the end of October and the beginning of November, and I have attended for the past twenty-ish years with only threeish exceptions. I almost never go alone, but have family or friends go with me. For the past several years, my mother comes in from out of state to go with me. Almost always, Opening Weekend of Deer Season falls at the end of the same week as Quilt Festival, so the husbands of whomever attends Quilt Festival with me shows up for Opening Weekend festivities. This year was a real celebration as my parents and I arrived home Friday evening to find my husband and granddaughter dancing in our headlights on the front porch and a whole ranch full of people. The next day even more people arrived.
This year’s Opening Weekend was the biggest we have had in several years. Thanksgiving and Christmas here at our house will be very quiet by comparison. Now that our children are grown and married, the right thing for them is to split their holiday time with their spouses’ families. Both of our children-in-law have local grandparents who take precedence over we “younger” relatives. We are happy to give over actual Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve and Day to our elders. This scheme works out well for us, too, because it spreads the holiday celebrations around to more days during the season. My husband and I attend at least two Thanksgivings per year and have a Christmas with our kids, usually before the twenty-fifth, where we have a much more relaxed time than we would if we were trying to compete with the rest of the world for just one or two days.
I learned a long time ago that even happy times can be stressful, and we introverts are drained by interacting with lots of people, no matter how much we love or enjoy them. The Holiday Season pattern my family has fallen into is much easier on stress levels and the battery levels of this introvert.
Maybe your Holiday Season also started around the end of October, or maybe it will start next week. Either way, I wish all of you a safe, happy, healthy time with family and friends. And I wish for me the renewed ability to be on-schedule with my columns (and everything else).