I think my biggest challenge this year was that I wanted to keep things as normal as possible, stable ... and that just wasn't "it" this year. I felt a huge let-down on the 26th and 27th and even slept through the night, 10 hours straight! Since my husband passed in 2014, my Christmas has been fairly low-key, with pre-Christmas and Christmas Eve events with friends or extended family, and just a handful of people for dinner on Christmas Day. But Christmas during a pandemic, even lower-key than before (no holiday get-togethers with friends, short masked visits with extended family, only 4 for Christmas Day dinner), left me unfulfilled. Yes, there were some additional challenges this year that I was well aware of and thought I had adequately addressed, but it's led me to start rethinking how I'll celebrate going forward. Do I really want to do a big sit-down dinner, or opt for lighter fare in the future? I started paring down my Christmas card list this year, too. There are a lot of people on my list who I considered good friends, yet during the pandemic, their true colors showed through. I'm also thinking that we (my immediate family members) need to discuss limiting what we spend on each other. We are all in a position where, throughout the year, we can get what we want/need, leaving gifting to be more difficult. We're all adults now, and the smaller, more personal gifts and time spent together touched me more than the number of packages under the tree. And, there were some family dynamics that came into play this year; will need to see how things play out, as that definitely will impact Christmas 2021. Appreciative of the celebration of Christmas 2020, but learning from it, as well.
