Just before Christmas last year, I was surrounded by stuff to do, and I wasn’t doing enough of it. I was sitting in a pile of my own expectations and failing to measure up. And I was listening to Pandora’s Pentatonix Holiday station.

I’m still listening to Pentatonix Holiday radio. This year, I have the paid version and no longer have to listen to creepy Subway ads. When I don’t feel like Christmas music, I listen to something else instead of listening to holiday songs out of some strained sense of loyal obigation.We decorated our tree just days before Christmas. I didn’t go with my family to pick it out.

I didn’t have any lists of things to do or buy this year.List-making, mental and on paper, is something I have been consciously taking a break from since my trip. I made a mental list one day this past week in order to do my Christmas shopping, and it was horrible. I came home an overstimulated and exhausted puddle. So I’m going back to plan A: No lists. If I need to remember something, it goes in my Google calendar. If it’s something that is just floating through my head to make me feel like I’m not enough, I let it go.I haven’t done any sewing this year. Instead of personalized homemade ornaments for each person in our family, I picked ornaments out of a discount bin at a big box store. I won’t do that every year, but I think it needed to happen this year so I would know it was OK.

Since we aren’t traveling to Tobago until February this year, the shorts I usually make for the kids for Christmas can be put off for another few weeks. But even if that weren’t true, I think my sewing pile would still be sitting untouched.I got our advent calendar out this year, and then we did something else to remember advent instead of using it.

I got our Christmas books out, and the kids have been flipping through them. I think the Chaplain may have read a couple of them to some of the kids, but I haven’t cracked one open yet.

Two of my kids had White Elephant exchanges I didn’t find out about until it was too late to do anything about it. The world didn’t fall apart.

This year, our live nativity happened on Christmas Eve, and until the moment I decided to go for it, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. There was so much to do that day: Christmas baking, our traditional Christmas Eve family dinner for lunch, our Christmas Eve service (the Chaplain is our church’s music minister, so this is a big deal, plus three kids were singing in the childrens’ choir, and one kid was playing an angel in the pageant), all the gift wrapping. This year, my older girls helped with the baking, from our traditional sausage and lasagna to sticky buns. The Chaplain helped with kitchen clean up. I wasn’t working alone.The nativity happened much like it did last year – a whirlwind of activity, handing out costumes, hanging the backdrop, and finding a suitable treat to bribe everyone for participation. I wasn’t sure One would go for it until the moment he put on the bathrobe. I didn’t know if Seven would sit for long enough for me to get anything usable.

Now, it’s Christmas night. I wanted to put this post up a year to the day since I posted for the first time on this blog, December 24, 2017. The blog was a Christmas gift from the Chaplain last year.I was a little out of sorts about posting late, but I’m pretty tickled by the nativity shots. If you have a family or a group of willing friends, or even a pack of kid cousins, this is definitely something to try. I bought a king-sized tapestry for the backdrop, but otherwise, all the costumes came from our closets. It is a tremendously fun mode of creative expression.

I’m already trying to decide if Seven should be a sheep next year, while a doll stands in for Baby Jesus, or if he could get away with being the Baby one more year before he outgrows his role. After all, next year everyone else will have grown bigger, so he might still look small in comparison.I’ve been reflective this week about all that has changed in the last year. If you came to me last Christmas and told me all about it ahead of time, I probably would have laughed. Meanwhile, my rational brain is downplaying the shifts by pointing out that if I hadn’t been documenting it on the blog, all the things that feel huge now might have passed by without as much notice.

I don’t believe that. I know this Christmas, and the solid, balanced frame of mind I brought to it were reflective of a whole lot of work I did this year. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Merry Christmas.