How I Spent My Christmas Vacation – Part 1

My husband and I don’t usually put up Christmas decorations. And while I’m sure that makes us sound crotchety, the truth is that we’re not usually around during the holidays. We spend the time between Christmas Eve and New Years Day either visiting with or traveling with my husband’s family. So the amount of time we would spend enjoying any decorations we put up is exceedingly small.

Last year, after a particularly grueling set of flights, we sat down to talk about the strain of constant holiday travel. When we were in our 20’s, it was nothing to hop on a plane the night after my husband finished his last half-day work day so that we could arrive as soon as possible and maximize our visiting time. But now even leaving the next day or the Monday after can be very draining, especially since we live on the opposite side of the country.

Shortly before the pandemic hit, we moved into a new house. One of the biggest features of the new house – and the reason we picked it – was that it had a lot more space than our old house. Not only do I have an office with a door that closes, we have two extra rooms. So what if we stopped traveling every holiday and started hosting a few?

We were a little nervous. In order to make this happen, we would be asking 3 people to travel to us instead of traveling just ourselves to join them. And it isn’t like the flight is shorter coming in this direction. But when we pitched the idea, the family was instantly on board. And so, for the first time, we hosted Christmas at our house this year – and it was a huge success!

Some Things Were Different

For me, one of the biggest stressors about traveling for the holidays is the hard deadline that marks the end of my work year. If something takes a little extra time or goes wrong, there isn’t wiggle room for catch up. All of my work has to be done by a certain point.

I try not to bring work with me on the holidays. I even try not to work through my holidays when I stay home. But it was nice to have a few extra hours for those little tasks this year. Especially since they can save me from big headaches later on.

Being the Christmas host provided some other opportunities that I was eager to take advantage of. One was that we actually got out our Christmas tree for the first time since the pandemic. And when we set it up, we realized we had a lot more Christmas decorations than we even realized. We actually had to stop adding Christmas balls because we had too many.

One other thing I haven’t done since the pandemic is bake Christmas cookies. Again, it usually seems pointless when we travel. And my husband’s mother always has a ton of cookies waiting for us when we get to her place. But as the host, I was able to dust off my baking skills and make some of the family favorites. I spent 2 days in the kitchen, sometimes kicking up minor disasters. (It’s not pretty when I bake.) But in the end, there were lots of delicious treats everyone enjoyed.

I even tried making a brand new type of cookie this year, one we’ve never heard of before. For awhile, it looked like it was going to fail. But in the end, it succeeded spectacularly and everyone loved it!

Some Things Stayed the Same

One thing we did not change about the holidays, despite swapping hosts, was the handling of the menu. My mother-in-law loves to cook. And she’s good at it! She likes to make plans not just for Christmas Day but also Christmas Eve and New Years Eve as well. When we pitched the idea of taking turns hosting, we made it clear that she could still be in charge of all the big meal days, if she wanted to.

My in-laws are pretty used to our kitchen. We’re happy to let them do as they please while they’re here, and they usually make themselves right at home. I expected we would be missing some of the gadgets that make these big meal preparations easier, but it turned out we had most of what was needed.

We used to always eat finger foods on Christmas Eve. Basically, we would buy a bunch of frozen appetizers and heat them up in the oven. But that gets really heavy really fast. So this year, my mother-in-law put together a giant charcuterie board accompanied by homemade French Onion soup – both of which were delicious!

One of our other big traditions is fondu on New Year’s Eve. We don’t do the cheese kind, though, we use a broth. We sit around the table for hours just chatting and eating. And then when all’s said and done, we put the last of the bits into the broth and turn it into a stew.

Sadly, our guests had to leave New Years Day, so the stew was eaten by just me and the husband. But his mom set us up nicely with the perfect broth. We also spent a day making homemade pierogis; a new experience for me and the husband. And they, too, were delicious.

How We Spent the Time

Outside of changing the location where Christmas was held this year, I would say it was a pretty typical holiday. In addition to being well-fed, we played a lot of games. My brother-in-law purchased the game “Feed the Kraken” for his parents, and we played a couple rounds. This is a social deduction game, the kind that involves lying. A type of game I’m usually very bad at. But I managed to do a decent job of lying twice and even won a round for the pirates.

In typical holiday tradition, we decided to watch all of the Die Hard movies in sequence, starting with the first one on Christmas Eve. We had all pretty much forgotten the last installment. (And have agreed it can probably be left out of future marathons.) But it was still fun.

On Boxing Day, we took a run to our usual craft haunts and scored a model we had been looking for that was both out of print and on sale for 15% off. You can’t argue with a deal like that! We also introduced my husband’s family to the joy that is Dropout content and got a kick out of re-watching some of our favorite episodes.

For our last big event, we invited a pair of friends over. They provided us with two cuts of venison, and my husband cooked them in his prized smoker. We prepared each in a slightly different way, but both were huge successes.

Overall, I would say it was a fun, relaxing holiday. We got to spend some time away from the usual grind, and we got to do it with some people we don’t usually get to see. The best part about it was that we didn’t have to travel at the end either – we just got to go on relaxing.

But there was something else I had to deal with during the rest of my Christmas vacation. Something a lot less fun. We’ll delve into that next time!