January is passing swiftly, so I figured it was time for an update! Here’s how I did on my 2024 holiday fun list. You can read the original list here.
See Luminature at the Philadelphia Zoo. This did not start promisingly, as the little boys whined a lot. But I purchased them little light-up toys to wave around and they cheered up. The 9-year-old did deign to tell me that it was a lot of fun. So that was a win.
Get Christmas lights professionally installed. Yep, it’s been fun to see the trees lit up when I come home! I think next year I might spring to get a few more trees wrapped in lights. They gave me a bid to line the driveway with lights, but since we have a very long driveway, I balked. I am, fundamentally, a frugal person, and there are limits to my holiday merriment.
Attend the Pentatonix concert. My 17-year-old and I went to this in Madison Square Garden two days before Thanksgiving. It honestly feels like a lifetime ago at this point! I enjoyed the concert a lot and he did too.
Host Thanksgiving. I did indeed cook a turkey. I did not run the Thanksgiving morning 5k because it was pouring down rain but I ran on my street (so I could duck quickly into the house to warm up). My little brother brought sourdough rolls, which were wonderful (I’d needed a sub for my sister-in-law’s rolls since she was traveling to her family!). It was also fun to get together with SHU’s family over Thanksgiving weekend.
Visit Longwood Gardens. I did this as a date night with my husband but I am still hoping to go back one more time before the Christmas decorations end on Jan 12th. I enjoyed seeing the brand new greenhouse.
Sing in many Christmas concerts. This was kind of the defining feature of my December. I sang in both a carol concert and the Bach B-Minor Mass with Choral Arts Philadelphia. I sang in a service of lessons and carols and the Christmas Eve service with my church choir. So much singing. It was great. I was so worried I’d get a respiratory virus and lose my voice but I managed to keep that part of my body healthy at least. We shall not speak of the norovirus epidemic.
Do a cookie baking extravaganza. My daughter and I went to visit my mom in New Jersey and we baked Christmas cookies and gingerbread cookies while there.
Have breakfast with Santa. We went to Neiman Marcus and did their breakfast up in the cafe. People got balloons and face paint. My frugal children did their annual balking at the price tags on stuff we had to walk through to get to the cafe.
Watch the Nutcracker. Did not happen. I bought tickets, then my companion (17-year-old) got sick and we did not go. I will aim for next year!
See the Rockettes in NYC. All of us drove into the city and watched the show this year, then went out to dinner. There were elements that reminded me why we left the city (walking around in 17 degree weather…the restaurant not being able to seat us until 20 minutes after our reservation and we were waiting in a crowd of people and constantly having to move…) but the show was fun. We may not go see the Rockettes next year as the show was pretty much the same as last year. Perhaps they change it up every few years. But we might go back to see lights and go shopping in NYC.
Watch kids in the Christmas pageant. My reader did excellent and my sheep was a very convincing sheep.
Get matching family pajamas. We wound up with a red and black plaid pattern from Amazon. It worked!
Read Christmas stories with the 4 (now 5) year old. He is still a beast at bedtime, but we read a lot of Christmas stories. Last night we read Jan Brett’s Home for Christmas, which is about a naughty troll, and I felt like potentially there was some identification with said troll.
Do the Lego Christmas scene and some Christmas puzzles. We finally finished the Lego set last weekend! I did two 1000-piece holiday-themed puzzles, plus a 500-piece winter themed one.
Enjoy myself. Well, some of the time. There was a lot of stress with gift procurement, traveling right after Christmas, and trying not to get sick. But there were some nice moments too. A holiday season is vast, and contains multitudes.
I read your blog in hopes that your pragmatism will rub off on me. Only time will tell!
@Stephanie – ha! I try to be pragmatic when I can, I guess.
I didn’t make a list this year but many things happened even so, not all as I envisaged though. “The Nutcracker” at our local theatre, lovely, but my 85 year old mum forgot her inhaler so we had to move at the interval and I watched the second half from the front row which is an interesting way to see ballet but not the best. Local National Trust property decorated for Christmas (18th century country house), lovely, but my companion, my 20 year old daughter, was stressed over her pending Masters application so it was a bit of a rush. “Polar Express” at our local cinema, with same daughter, who hadn’t seen the film since she was a child, was stressed out by the noisy and restless small kids there, one of whom kicked her repeatedly from the next seat, (surely there was far too much peril in the film for 4 year olds?) so we left at the interval! Carol service at local church with mum and dad, lovely, but daughter left at home too stressed out to come with me as planned by trying to put the lights on the Christmas tree and an allergic reaction! Older daughter, now working in a full time job so only able to come home on 23rd in the end not making it until Christmas Eve because all trains cancelled out of Sheffield on the evening of the 23rd. Christmas light show at Belton House on Boxing Day, a mile trail through the grounds and up to the lake – amazing and thanks to my husband as we braved an hour’s drive each way in fog on country roads . Family get together for 15 of us 3+ hours from home on 28th, made it happen despite my husband being ill – 20 year old drove both ways in one day, including the infamous M25. I was very aware, as was the 20 year old, that she graduates from university in the summer and if she isn’t doing a Masters from the autumn but working in a job, this would have been her last full Christmas at home and our last as a family – shorter visits only from then on. How weird is that?
@Katherine – I’m aware of it being my high school senior’s last full season here – I assume he will be home for Christmas next winter and may indeed have a longer break but it’s hard to know what it will be. He mentioned an idea for spring break 2026 and I reminded him that I had no idea if his spring break would be ours next time!
A Sunday afternoon choral concert with friends, a Black Friday Holiday Stroll and Christmas tree lighting in a nearby village on my list did not happen. Other stuff that didn’t happen include a getaway for our anniversary (we both had colds) and our planned trip to see my husband’s son and family out of town. Instead, they came into town on Jan 3 to drive up to the Jan 5 Packer game. So instead of a 6-day trip, I had 6 houseguests for what turned into almost 4 days. All good, all fine.
What did happen: a very local to us Sunday afternoon Winter Market with vendors, music, etc., was more fun than I’d anticipated
our condo association Christmas dinner out was also good fun
a couple of dinners out with friends turned into us entertaining here twice, both times doing carry-in catering
I’d planned to take my oldest kid and his family (includes a 7-, 6- and 3-year-old) to an afternoon at a conservatory with a Desert Dome, Tropical Dome and Show Dome. The latter was a wonderland of holiday exhibits and flowers. We’d had to reschedule from the 14th to the 22nd because of a sick kiddo which allowed me to rearrange things to have my Christmas Eve birthday celebrated that day as well, with daughter and family joining all the rest of us at a restaurant after we were done with the conservatory.
Then church on Christmas Eve, and all the local family came here for Christmas brunch. It worked, but I’m always looking to tweak, expand and change as people evolve (and we all get older!)
@Holly – nice work on pivoting. The winter market sounds fun – I definitely want to visit a good one some year!
We have the same Lego set and now have a whole holiday Lego village. My BIL and SIL have been sending our kids a Christmas Lego set for the last 5 years and it has become a tradition in and of itself to re-build and set out the Lego village. They are still out and I am looking at them at the moment and trying to decide if we should package them up mostly whole so we don’t have to re-build them all come December. We’ll likely have the new one to build and it was a job this season because we bag up each set each in their own large zipper bag but it’s not the same as the sub-division of the set when its new. Also, my husband and i both were sick at the end of November so we felt like we were late getting all the holiday stuff going. We shall see. it’s going to get put away this weekend.
I enjoy your reflection on the holiday season and being intentional about fun since it’s so easy for it to pass feeling like all obligation. There is still a lot of fun to be had and enjoyment of getting to be with family and friends!
@Jen – we don’t deconstruct! We just store them intact and then pull them out the next Christmas. I can’t imagine how much work that would be to rebuild 8 sets or something like that!
Thank you for helping so many of us be more intentional about each season. In early December, we headed to the Christmas markets in Frankfurt, Strasbourg, and Colmar, as well as to several smaller but picture perfect Alsatian towns. They were magical, although the food and merchandise selections got a little repetitive after a while. I’m still trying to work off the 3 pounds that the Christmas markets and post-market cookie baking wrought. We had shopped for gifts, gotten cards out, decorated and got our tree cut out and festooned before we left for Europe. This made things easier when we got home. After we got back, I got to wander around in a few stores (such as Trader Joe’s) which had themed merchandise. I dedicated an entire peaceful afternoon to a marathon Christmas magazine reading marathon (with copious cups of tea and Christmas cookies mixed in). My 3 year old grandson and I baked cookies together, and the big grin on his face as he dropped chocolate chips into the dough was priceless. His father (my son) accused me of putting “demon eyes” on the gingerbread men when I used Craisins, which added a bit of bantering and levity to the proceedings. My husband and I used the Christmas Prism app to drive around with hot chocolate one night and view some of the decked out houses in our area (complete with light shows set to music). Someone in the Philadelphia area created the app several years ago, and it maps out where some of the houses are located. We also had good times with family and friends-and in light of the way this year started in New Orleans and LA, I am grateful for that opportunity most of all.
@BethC – I definitely need to put the Christmas markets on my list! So glad your holiday went well, and yes, good to recognize what is important given how terrible the start of this year has been for so many.