The holidays are my favorite time of the year. Yes, I love the season for the Christmas lights, the cookies, the peppermint patties, and the feel-good, cheerful movies, amongst so many other things.
I love decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments from years past. In my family, we followed the tradition of having each family member receive an ornament each year, and we kept a running list of what we received each Christmas with the idea that, as us kids grew up, moved away from home, and had a tree of our own, we would get all of our ornaments so that we could start our own traditions. You can trace so much about my family and I from the ornaments we received each year, whether it was my wolf phase, my moose phase, a set of ornaments purchased while on a particularly unique family vacation, and more, and putting up each ornament garners memories, stories, and smiles.
The best thing about the holidays, though, is that time spent with family, whether it’s decorating the tree or getting together for the holiday itself. Everyone is in the spirit of giving and in the mindset of making others happy. In my family, this isn’t hard to do. The routine of being woken up early by my youngest brother and sharing an Irish coffee around the Christmas tree as gifts are distributed and Narada or Elvis Christmas music plays in the background floods us with content and is the image that comes to mind when I think of Christmas.
I love gift giving. It’s such fun trying to think of the perfect thing for a person that they didn’t realize they wanted, or stumbling across that light bulb idea-inducing item. I think it’s all just about being thoughtful, and one of the things that I thought was a great idea this year was to get family and friends little items from my new city, Boulder.
For my recent post on Your Boulder, “Give the Gift of Boulder,” with some of these ideas, click here.