Celebrating Christmas in April?!

About a month ago on one boring Quarantine day I was searching for another movie to put in the DVD player to fill in the miscellaneous, long hours between the most exciting parts of my day; lunch and dinner, when I came across a box of all of my christmas favorites. Elf, The Grinch, Home Alone, Love Actually and many, maaannnyy more (we have an obsession, but who doesn’t?) I was so sad to not be able to watch them. When I think about it, some of my all time favorites are christmas movies, but I knew it just wouldn’t be the same. That ~christmas spirit~ was missing, for this reason I also do my best to avoid listening to christmas music until late November; it’s just not special. But then I had a lightbulb-above-my-head brilliant idea! Why not give the glorious holiday and all of it’s festivities a special out of season appearance, and spend a day in the spring doing all of my favorite christmas activities? Who’s stopping me?

At first I thought of simply watching my movies in christmas pajamas and drinking hot chocolate, but the more I pondered it, the bigger the idea grew! When I told my parents about it I expected a few weird expressions and for them to write me off with a laugh and “okay, have fun!” But they took me by surprise and were completely on board! I guess we were all game for some exciting entertainment, even if it was a bit odd.

We decided to all buy each other a gift to open on our Christmas morning. So, I ventured out to Target with my Mom one night and we found the perfect gift for my Dad; a record of the soundtrack from one of his favorite movies, Pulp Fiction. And the very next day I made another journey to the Target to buy two games for my mom who has been practically begging us to play some with her for weeks, well now was the perfect opportunity to fulfill her wishes! Pro-tip= say no to people until their birthday or Christmas, and then you can call it a gift! JK!

All week I was thinking about our Christmas plans and it was so exciting to have something to look forward to again. It helped me get through my schoolwork and make sure I had everything completely done so Saturday would be perfect! Finally, “Christmas Eve” arrived, and we went into the attic to pull out some decorations. It was stuffy, humid, and a bit of a different experience from the frigid cold and our achy frozen feet when we’d done this seven months ago. But, Mom and I had fun as we sorted through boxes upon boxes of ornaments, lights, candles, santa hats, and nativity sets to decide how much we could use without overdoing it. If you wanna know how well that went, let’s just say it took more than one trip to take all the boxes down, and I’m the last person to “admit to defeat” and accept that we have to take multiple trips!

We lit up a gingerbread candle and I put my spotify Ultimate Christmas Playlist on shuffle as we got to work decorating the house. Instead of going through the hassle of putting up our big family christmas tree, (it wouldn’t have been worth the work for only one day), we put up the cute mini rose gold one that I bought for my room, and it looked amazing! If you walked into our house there would be no doubt that it was christmas time; there was a strand of lights, 4 stockings filled with candy (one for each of us, and of course one for the cats), and even the presents under the tree had christmas wrapping paper! I laughed so hard as my parents sang and danced along to Feliz Navidad and the part of Michele Buble’s “White Christmas” that for some reason always get’s my mom and I; “I-I-I-I’m dreaming of a white chRisTmAaAs”.

Once our house was the perfect winter wonderland, we turned the fire on, sipped peppermint coffee and hot chocolate out of mugs and watched my Dad’s favorite Christmas movie; Christmas Family Vacation! That movie evokes non stop laughter start to finish, and my favorite part has got to be when they ask their Great Aunt to say grace before eating their christmas dinner, and she starts reciting the pledge of allegiance! It is completely ridiculous! I’ve been spending so much extra time with my parents lately, but the moments when we are laughing together are by far my favorite.

On “Christmas morning” I stayed in my christmas pajamas, put on my signature Hannah Montana-esque sequin santa hat and came out into the living room to start what I knew would be a wonderful day! We dug into our stockings first, like always, and I struggled to stop myself from eating all of the chocolate and starburst candies in my stocking first thing in the morning, like I fail to do every christmas. To be fair, I’ve gained at least some more restraint than I had at 7 years old. We didn’t buy the cats anything for christmas but I put a few bags of treats we already had sitting in the pantry in their stocking and gave them a few more than usual. They deserved it for not clawing and destroying our christmas tree, so far at least.

Next we opened presents, and I took a bazillion pictures in order to get a good shot for the blog. My parents both loved their gifts and couldn’t wait to use them. They do that responsible-adult thing where they hold off buying something they want for a long time even though they eye-it everytime we go to the grocery store, so it was fun to see them both getting something that was a “want” and not a “need”. For my gift my parents fuelled my new baking obsession and got me some fancy gear! A new apron, pans and measuring cups, and a cookie dough scoop, which helps you scoop the dough in perfect, even balls, and will keep you entertained playing with it for a solid 3 minutes! With wrapping paper torn up and all across the floor it truly looked like Christmas morning, and my cat Toby was having the time of his life!

We spent the rest of the day watching more christmas movies and playing with our new “toys”! We had to watch my favorite heartwarming christmas rom-com, Love Actually, and of course it wouldn’t be christmas without Elf! We played both of the games we bought Mom. I was the champion of Color Brain, a game where you win by remembering the colors of Disney characters and the clothes they wore in the movies, meanwhile my Dad was a disgrace and couldn’t even remember the correct colors of Nemo! The other game required us to work as a team and toss a ball while doing various “Friends”-themed challenges. I wasn’t as skilled at this one and caused us to have to start over a few times when I dropped the ball while balancing a pillow on my head. If our neighbors had looked at us through the window, I’m sure they would’ve thought someone had spiked the hot cocoa…

In the afternoon I even tested out my new baking tools and made some mini strawberry muffins using handpicked strawberries from our recent trip to Sweet Berry Farms! I was feeling pretty proud of myself, and like an artificial-flavors conscious, whole foods buying chef with our natural ingredients and from-scratch recipe, until they came out kind of burnt and stuck to the baking cups. Oh well, it’s the taste that counts and the house still smelled amazing!

Overall the day was a huge success and I know we’ll have these fun memories to look back on in years to come. Or maybe future archeologists will come across my pictures and records of this day and use them as evidence of humans in 2020 starting to forget what month it was and losing their minds a bit. Either way it’s fun!

This day, and other fun moments I’ve had with my family during quarantine have made me so much more grateful for them. What started out as something to keep myself busy turned into an amazing opportunity to spend quality time with my parents, and because of that I think we really did capture the spirit of christmas! Even though you are around your family all the time, there are days that you take it for granted or feel more disconnected, but creating memories like this bring you together! Get creative and spend quality time with whoever you’re with (or whoever you’re able to connect with via phone/mail), because the give-and-take of relationships is like a bank account in a lot of ways, and putting extra time and effort to invest in your relationships with family and friends is one “transaction” that’s always worth it. No buyers remorse, guaranteed!

Merry corona-mas 🙂