I have a confession to make.
It’s a big one, and at first glance may not be understood by many. But anyway, let’s spit it out.
Over the past years I really hated Christmas.
As you may know, for 6 years I was the owner of a rapidly growing business. And working in any kind of shop means that holiday season is THE season. The end of the year means crazy sales to clear the inventory and being busy, busy, busy and busy all the time. Than the beginning of new the year brings no calming down, but stock-taking and tons of administrative issues. Not easy and definitely not a quick process in a shop selling tens of thousand of shiny but tiny little things.
Don’t misunderstand me, I loved the shop and especially the people around it!
This way I was part of the holiday of hundreds of families. It was fun to see what they prepared for their loved ones and heart-warming, when some of them stopped by to wish us merry Christmas.
But in the meanwhile my very own Christmas disappeared.
The times when with my mum and my big sister we baked together and made way too much cookies for the holiday season. (The coconut one for the sibling, the traditional multi-layered for the parent and the quark-cocoa because of me.) We drank mulled wine and decorated the gingerbread cakes. And we unreservedly admitted each year, that our skills have not improved at all since the last time.
My Love’s birthday is also at Christmas time. I can’t bake very well, but for this special occassion there was always a homemade cake at home. Each year a different one, trying to find the flavour he likes the most. Extra-chocolate cake and strawberry-almond cheesecake were among the best. But last year, there was no big celebration. No homemade cake and no candles for him. We spent 6 weeks before Christmas apart, in two different countries.
I used to come up with a new style of gift-wrapping each year. Sometimes I chose natural style with dried slices of orange, sometimes I was cutting out little Christmas figures to decorate the packages. Than it got simpler and simpler, and finally last year I used ready-made bags – the quickest and easiest solution for the gifts I bought last minute. I stayed in my PJs all days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. But not because we read and played games together with family or friends. I was just too tired and sick to get up and enjoy the time together…
So I decided to quit. I let go of the bead-shopping at wholesalers, where I could choose from tens of thousand of products. The joy of recieving the packages and unpack the many kilograms of treasures. I let go of the meetings, my collegues and the financial stability.
Nowadays besides building my new business (which I try to keep stress-free) I am working on a delicate window decoration to make our new home cosier. My Love helps me a lot, and even our friend who was visiting joined us. We laughed a lot, since none of us was cutting out and glueing paper figures for at least the past 10-15 years. I am also taking work-in-progress photos, and would like to prepare you a tutorial to make your own very soon.
Hopefully tomorrow.
[…] I mentioned in last week’s Monday monologue: after six years of being nervous, busy and dead tired around Christmas, this year I am learning […]