12 Days of Christmas …. Spirit

Do you ever feel like the holiday season kind of whips through in a cloud of sugar plum fairy dust and disappears before you even know what happened?

There are only twelve days til Christmas. TWELVE, people!!! How did that even happen?

I have a bad habit of ‘looking forward’ to things at the expense of enjoying the present. We have family coming to visit at Christmas and I’m so excited about it – to the point that I catch myself wishing the days would hurry up so Christmas (and family) would get here.

Bad Heather.

I don’t want to rush the season along. Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year and I want to make sure that I enjoy each day fully. Each day is a gift, that’s why they call it the present, right? 🙂

To  help with that, Andrew and I sat down and devised twelve things we could do (one a day) to enjoy the Christmas season. The rules were it had to either be free or cost just a few dollars, we had to do it together and it had to encourage our Christmas spirit.

We each wrote out six things separately and wouldn’t you know it, four of those things were exactly the same! Ha! Guess we have been together a long time 🙂 So we came up with a few more together and hung them on tags on the little Christmas tree in our kitchen.

In case you’d like to do the same and need some inspiration, here’s what we came up with:

12 Days of Christmas Spirit

1. Go see Pastega Lights. This is a free drive-through Christmas light show at the fairgrounds right down the road from our house.
2. Watch a Christmas movie (with Christmas popcorn). What is Christmas popcorn, you ask? Well, you take regular popcorn and then throw in a half-ton of generic Christmas M&M’s …. delicious!
3. Make a Christmas ornament together.
4. Drink hot cocoa by the fire.
5. Listen to live Christmas music. There are quite a few free musical events coming up at local churches so it should be relatively easy to go hear some lovely caroling.
6. Bake gingerbread cookies. (Because how can you not??)
7. Take a drive to see Christmas lights. There’s always that one neighborhood that puts up a ton of lights. Since we’re new here, we’ll have to do a little exploring but I’m sure there are some great Christmas decorations out there!
8. Enjoy a holiday coffee at Coffee Culture. This is a local coffee shop that we’ve been wanting to check out for awhile – it’s such a cozy looking spot and I can’t wait to try it out!
9. Find ‘our’ Christmas tree in the National Forest. Remember how I mentioned we purchased a permit to cut down a Christmas tree in the national forest? We’re all set to go searching for it!
10. Buy a Christmas record at the thrift store. There are some oldies but goodies in there!
11.  Have a Christmas music-singing-&-dance session (perhaps to above thrifted record?)
12. Stroll downtown and enjoy the holiday cheer of all the shops dressed up for Christmas.

As you can see, all the things we listed are quite simple (except for finding that dang tree …. that one will be a little difficult) but are guaranteed to put us in the Christmas spirit and hopefully give us some sweet memories.

If you’d like the whole season to slow down just a little bit so you can take it all in, then consider doing your own version of the 12 Days of Christmas Spirit. You certainly don’t have to use what I have listed. Maybe you put up your tree in a hurry and what you’d really like to do is spend a quiet evening looking at all the ornaments you’ve collected over the years, reminiscing about how you got them. Maybe you just want to put on your Christmas pj’s, drink eggnog and write your own letter to Santa. Whatever it is, I hope you make a little time each day to enjoy this wonderful Christmas season! (and let me know what you come up with … I need ideas for next year! :)  )