Since we decided to stay in Bellingham this Christmas, we joined a few of the others who also decided to stay.  I made sure to call my parents before heading out to Blackberry Acres; about a 45 minute drive into the county.  Adam and Lenore have made this 60 acre parcel of forest their home for the last several years, and this year the festivities were out there - with the 3 feet of snow.  It was a bit ironic leaving the nicely plowed streets and manageable rained on snow for the county roads where driveways have to be cleared with excavators, but fortunately we were left unscathed after the adventure.

We didnt know how the roads would be; more specifically their driveway, so we made plans to caravan with Nate , Christina and Rich.  Then they would join us in the truck with their dog and our 2 dogs for the trip up the drive.  Rich and Nate decided this was a good plan and volunteered to hop in the back of the truck with Lucy and Inari.  They were certainly a sight to behold back there.

Lenore is recovering from an ACL surgery on the 23rd, so she was grateful to have everyone come to her house for the celebration.  She was in great spirits and didn't complain even once about her newly splinted leg.  Enid, Adam's sister finished up some beaded earrings as a gift for a friend as Rich worked on every crossword puzzle he could find in the house.  We exchanged final gifts with our Secret Santa that Nate organized.  Rich got a box full of WECU pens from Sean, which apparently are the "best pens ever".  I got a handmade necklace - along wiht my 12 days of christmas mini-gifts (dove chocolates, pixi stix, green tea, marshmallows, etc.) from Lenore.  We gave Enid a new knife sharpener and some honey, and I gave out a few of the cards of my paintings.  

Everyone brought something to share, including Miguel's Beet and Whipped Yams, Christina's vegetarian lasagna, Adam's Smoked Duck (freshly hunted with Miguel) and ribs, scalloped potatoes and tomato soup. Rich who hates Yams and Adam who hates Beets and Yams convinced us that they liked the Beet and Yam dish, whereas Nate firmly did not like it at all.  Overall the meal went over well and there were minimal awkward silences accompanied by a lot of laughs.

The culminating and climax of the night, however, was the game of Celebrity that we all played.  Even Adam's neighbor, an elder man that got snowed in for the holiday, took part in this goofy game of sharade-like maneuvers.  With about 90 names of famous people in a hat, we described each of them to our teams in hopes of getting more correct answers than the other team.  We worked on old stars like Johnny Cash and Burt Reynolds, Galeleio, Shel Silverstien, Belinda Carlile, Alf and even Miguel's favorite crew of national leaders: Slobodan Malosevich and Benazir Bhutto.  In the first round, you can use as many words as necessary.  In the second round, only one word, and in the third round, only gestures.  I'm proud to have come away for the night with the award for the worst all-time clue of "dog" to represent Paris Hilton (which made sense if my team would have been listening to the person that described her as "having a little dog", but nobody remembered apparently).   

We all piled back in the truck about 11pm and safely made it back home.  A Merry Christmas for sure.

Growing up, we always had Christmas traditions and I took part in all of it.  In Mom's family, it's a tradition to make a village every December.  Did I mention that my mom loves Christmas?  The village consists of a tiered landscape sometimes as big as 8 feet tall and wide, made of boxes that are covered with a white sheet and adorned with tiny Christmas lights...white ones.  Then we proceed to add countless boxes of miniature everything.  People, houses, cars and animals and Disneyland characters...snow covered trees, skating rinks, sleds and reindeer.  One year I made a flying helicopter suspended from the ceiling and another year I spent hours making a tunnel for a working train.  Through high school and even into college, we kept making the village (and my mom continues to make it at her house).  Some years it was minimal because we knew we'd be going away, and others would be extravagant, but eventually the time came for me to leave home, and since then, the village has taken a backseat, so to speak.

Mom does a good job of slowly building up my collection of Christmas paraphanelia, and little doo dads that could go on my village someday, but I have to admit that I dont have the same Christmas spirit that I once had.  I have some excuses though.  The first, and foremost being space.  We brought a Christmas tree in last year, and there it sat in our living room until about February.  We felt like we owed the tree some token of our gratitude, so we tried to appreciate it for as long as possible.  Oh, and that little part about having to take the time to dismantle and clean up all the stuff.  Put all the ornaments back in the little boxes and up into the attic.  We're good at procrastinating.  The second excuse is dogs.  They like to frolic and jump and chase stuffed animals, and in this little living room, that doesn't leave much hope for ceramic houses and little people that barely have enough mass to hold themselves up.  Therefore, we're left with a few little shelf and window ledges for any type of village.  Oh, and the part about having to get all the boxes down from the attic, and to have to put them back up there in February again.  

So this Christmas, I put an elf out on the speaker and a figurine of a Santa Claus on the bookshelf.  Our neighbor gave us a Poinsettia.  So what's the deal here?  How did I grow up with such a big emphasis and interest in the Christmas decorating and hub-ub - to turn into this complacent non-decorator?  I don't know.  That's my answer.  I think that when I have kids it will be a different story.  I think I'll get into the spirit of giving and using what we have to make our house festive for one month (or 3 if I'm still a procrastinator) of the year.  Part of me worries that it won't come back.  That my distaste for materialism and the gathering of things-I-dont-need-that-take-up-space will continue to get the better of me, and turn me into a Christmas Grinch.  

I do like being in a room with a village all lit up and just sitting there in the dark imagining the lives of all the miniature people walking in the snowy landscape.  I do.  I do like the feeling that the holidays are something fun and full of holiday colors and smells, and more than just shopping stats on NPR.  I don't like chores and cleaning up more than I already have to.  There's something to be said, too, for decorating for other people.  If friends are coming over or kids are there to partake and enjoy the traditions, it makes it all more meaningful.  

So next year, I'm going to make more of an effort; that is, if we're even staying here for Christmas.  I don't think I'll get a tree, but I'll get up in the attic and pull a few things down.  Maybe move a few books out of the bookshelf to fix up a little village even.  Maybe we'll invite people over so they can enjoy it too, in the Spirit of Christmas.