December is for remembering what matters 🎄
On smushed angels, invisible love, and why your home feels crowded.
The angel on the top of my tree? She’s a bit smushed.
And she could do with a moroccan oil hair treatment.
And when I tried to straighten her wings, the tip of the left one broke off in my hand and I had to use a bit of invisible tape to re-attach it.
This is clearly not her First Noel.
She looks a bit … haggard.
And kind of … bewildered.
Like she has seen things, if you know what I mean.
And I love that.
Because I, too, have seen some things.
And so have you.
I don’t know what your year has been like. But I imagine it’s been great. And terrible. Because that’s how years seem to go.
I imagine you’ve pressed the snooze button on your alarm 862 times and plucked 14,201 eyebrows. You’ve won battles you never intended to fight. And said good-bye to at least one person you won’t see again until we’re all on the other side.
I hope you played cards. And learned The Fate of Ophelia dance moves. And ate pigs in a blanket Every. Dang. Weekend.
But maybe you didn’t.
Maybe you dressed like a frog and marched with (and for) your neighbors. Maybe you rolled your eyes so hard on “Liberation Day” that you can now see the Gulf of Mexico America out of the back of your head. Maybe you knelt by your bed every night to beg the Almighty for some of that peace that passes understanding because it’s exhausting to be a mad woman.
All I can say is, Thank Gawd It’s Christmastime. Because we NEED to decorate a tree.
And we need to decorate it with the ornaments we wrap in tissue paper for safekeeping and keep in the boxes on the top shelf of the closet.
The ornaments we’ve been saving for such a time as this.
The ornaments that make our eyes light up and our hearts ache in all the right places.
The ornaments with the stories.
This is why we put up the Christmas tree.
Why we drag out the boxes of ornaments and garland and lights.
Why we secretly can’t wait to see all the baubles we tucked away last January in boxes filled with nostalgia and good wishes and lots of love.
We need to see our memories.
We need to look at the souvenirs we’ve collected from the life we have lived so that we have proof that we were here. And that all the small Tuesdays of our life are adding up to something. And that we really were that girl, in that place, with those people.
We need tangible reminders of invisible love.
The catch, of course, is that this same tenderness is also why you sometimes feel like you’re drowning in your own home.
You love your memories. But you also kind of want to put your entire house in a snow globe and shake it until it resets.
You can feel that something has to change, you just don’t want that “something” to be the smushed angel or the Swarovski snowflake or the worn-out t-shirt or any of the other things you’ve been keeping because they hold your people and your memories and your hardest years.
You should hold tight to those. Of course you should. This is how you remember and make sense of your life.
The problem isn’t that you care about those things.
The problem is that too many other things have snuck in and are pretending to be just as important.
When every mug, every photograph, every magnet on your fridge is treated like it has to carry deep meaning? Nothing stands out as meaningful.
Your home stops feeling comforting and starts feeling … crowded.
So here’s what I suggest you do.
Let December do what December does best: remind you what actually matters.
Then, when the decorations come down in January, use that clarity to start letting go of the things that don’t. The things that are just taking up space.
So you can come home and just … be.
And maybe give yourself a Moroccan oil hair treatment.
Your favorite Christmas tree decorator,
Vivian
Wanna talk about your space and map out a clear, do-able plan with a starting point that makes sense and gets you moving in the right direction?