On Milestones & Holidays
Hello! I hope you had a nice week and have lots to look forward to this weekend!
It’s our 17th wedding anniversary tomorrow, and to celebrate, Jim and I are heading to New York City for two nights. We got married in NYC (Brooklyn, specifically) on a wintery night, made festive by a sprinkling of snow, holiday lights - and New York’s inimitable sparkle!
Apparently, the “traditional” gift for this anniversary is furniture, because, according to TheKnot.com “…just like a loving relationship, quality home furnishings are sturdy, reliable and will last a lifetime.”
This has been making me laugh, as I ponder: which piece of furniture best represents our teenaged marriage: A chair? A table? Do kitchen appliances count? I wanted to come up with something clever to impress you, dear readers, but struggled.
My best idea was this: our marriage is like the legs of the family dinner table, holding up and supporting our home, children, work, and lives. I know - lame!
So I texted Jim:
“Which piece of furniture most represents our marriage at this point would you say?”
“…Love seat?” he replied.
Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? I’m glad Jim’s seeing the “love” in marriage, vs. the boring, sturdy, wooden legs of a table…
Moving on: How are you feeling about the holidays? If you’re in any way anxious, you might enjoy Glennon Doyle’s “Happyish Holidays” podcast with three “hacks for hard holidays.” I laughed out loud - especially at Number three, which is “Be Unsurprised” when it comes to the behavior of family members who are simply being themselves. The podcast has good practical tips, including for sober people or those with eating issues, because, as SNL captures perfectly in the skit below, even our “best ever” holidays are far from perfect…
Holiday party season: are you filled with dread or anticipate it with glee? Alison Roman perfectly captured the love-hate relationship many of us have with party angst in this recent essay:
“Lately, as a mature and grown person, my strategy is to drink less, go home earlier and say no more, but as we all know, that strategy is deeply, tragically flawed. Despite my best efforts, I’m still out more than I’d like and not enough as I think I should be…We dread it, we look forward to it. We can’t wait and also can’t wait for it to be over…trapped behind the hours-old shrimp cocktail soaking in melted ice, talking to someone we peripherally know about how “this year was so wild” asking “how is it already December,” and telling someone who absolutely doesn’t care: “yeah, I’m definitely going to try and get to Italy next summer.”
Roman’s solution is to throw her own party - and not just any party, but a HAM PARTY, and she kindly supplied an instructional video for hosting your own. ALLCAPS not optional.
As she says:
“If I’m going to dress up, I want the option to take my shoes off forty-three minutes into the event in the privacy of my own home. If someone is going to run into someone they don’t want to see it certainly won’t be me, because I will have been in charge of the guest list. If I’m going to be so hungover I want to die, it shall be by my own hands with my own batched 50/50 martinis.”
My own issue with holiday party season is that it all ends on January 1st and we then fall into a major winter doldrum until Memorial Day, with a brief chocolate-binge at Easter. Why can’t some holiday parties happen in January and February, thereby easing the scheduling disaster of December, and giving us something to look forward to?
Taking inspiration from Alison, I may just solve this problem for myself, by throwing a post-holidays HAM PARTY. Full disclosure: I don’t actually like ham, but it seems like a great way to cope with the inevitable post-party-season (and freezing cold winter) blues.
Are you more into staying home to decorate and bake? Here’s a wonderful list of secret family cookie recipes to make! How great do these candy cane shortbread cookies look?!
Less into baking, more into silliness? Look no further than this adorable illustrated guide to weird family traditions! Are you brave enough to serve up a “A Purposefully Unappetizing Christmas Breakfast?”
And if you have time for festive decorating (our tree is up, with lights, but no ornaments yet…), how about this Dried Orange Garland? There are tons of stunning ideas in this piece about using foliage to decorate, and this one with “chic” holiday decorating tips; and here’s a fun indoor winter activity with the kids: this adorable ice ornament. And how gorgeous is this all-naturally decorated Christmas tree?! Goals!
While you’re decorating and baking, how about listening to Seth Macfarlane’s Holiday for Swing, or if that’s too traditional, there’s Anthropologie’s Christmas Vibes, Food 52’s Hipster Vibes, or my brother-in-law, Teddy’s, millennial-cool Christmas playlist. One of my all-time favorite Christmas songs is Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses - this Kylie Minogue version is pretty fun, too!
Festive music will forever remind me of our wedding playlist. Getting married in December 2005 meant that we danced to an eclectic mix of holiday classics like the Eartha Kitt version of Santa Baby, Outkast’s Hey Ya, and all the Cafe Neon1 dance floor faves from the 90s, including Oh What A Night, Rhinestone Cowboy, Sweet Caroline, and the best song to play at the end of any event: All Night Long by Lionel Richie.
If all this decorating, baking, and party talk just makes you want to curl up on the couch and watch TV, I hear you! For guidance on this year’s extremely bumper crop of holiday movies, look no further than this informative and entertaining piece. Honestly, after reading it, I don’t feel like I need to watch the actual movies!
In non-holiday viewing, I started Lady Chatterley’s Lover this week (it’s a movie, so I’m watching in installments given my strict 9 pm bedtime) and it’s really good. And I’m thrilled that Slow Horses is back with a second season. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend starting with the first season: Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott-Thomas are excellent as warring (and comically snide) British spies. Here’s a fascinating profile of Mick Herron, the author of the books the series is based on.
Phew! That’s it for me this week!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, whether you’re ignoring the holiday season or embracing it. My goals for our anniversary weekend are to sleep in past 6 am, enjoy the ability to chat with Jim uninterrupted by the kids, and above all: to find a loveseat to take a selfie on, to commemorate making it to 17 years of marriage!
Thank you for reading!
xoxo
Amelia
P.S.: If there’s a man if your life (or you’re a man) struggling with gift shopping, there’s always this classic: good for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, every single holiday…
Cafe Neon was the hottest late night hangout for 90’s kids in Brisbane, Australia, where I grew up…
LOL Mil, loving the scribble this week! Bringing back many memories (cafe neon) and of your wedding day in NY! Oh what a night!💃
Congratulations to you and Jim on 17 year anniversary. Enjoy the love seat ❤️ ❤️ Lovebirds! Xx