A family Christmas.

[rivka]

Yesterday, Misha and I bought our first Christmas tree together.

We've been together now for four and a half years, and we've never had a tree. When we were dating, we spent Christmas with our respective families. The first year we lived together, too - it was harder to be apart, at Christmas, but I imagine that we both still thought of ourselves as "going home" when we separated in the airport. Our first married Christmas came in the midst of my internship interviews. I think we had one small pointsettia to make our apartment festive, and it died while we were visiting my family. And last year... last year we took one lone garland (a string of "presents" wrapped in silver, red, and green foil paper) and strung it over our bedroom mirror, and made do with that. We didn't have the money to buy presents for anyone but each other and the children in the family, and we didn't have the heart to decorate. We went to Misha's father's house and shared their Christmas instead.

I had no idea how much I cared. If you'd asked me in May how we were going to celebrate Christmas, I probably would have told you that we'd alternate visiting his parents and mine, until we had kids and started making our own holiday traditions. But suddenly, this year, it occurred to me - why wait? We've established our household and our family; why should the holidays reduce us to a subset of someone else's household?

So we went out yesterday and bought a tree. Five and a half feet of Douglas fir, and an easy-to-use Christmas tree stand that gave us considerable pause. From the depths of the hall closet I unearthed the shoebox that holds the five ornaments I own. We opened up the bag Misha's father gave us, filled with ornaments from his childhood trees. And we bought lights, and a box of beautiful glass Santas, and a free-form spiral cone for the top of the tree. And last night we strung the lights and hung the ornaments one by one, and I found myself speechless and choking back tears, and grinning until my cheeks hurt.

It's a beautiful tree. It really is astonishingly beautiful.

Ben was here to help decorate, and he took some pictures - I'll attempt to upload one to my journal tomorrow, with his help. But I'm not sure how well the beauty will translate into pixels. What really moved me was feeling that Misha and I are not just a couple, but a family.

In a little less than two weeks we'll drive up to New York to spend Christmas with my parents and siblings and the little kids. We're part of that family too. I always love to see them, and I'm excited about being with them for Christmas. But we'll also be a family, complete and entire, here in Baltimore. I can't express how that makes me glow.

Comments

I think I can maybe almost imagine it...

[peaberry.livejournal.com]

... we've been doing the same thing here since we moved into the house. It's really cool. :)

Merry Christmas!

*hugs*

[pixel.livejournal.com]

But I'm not sure how well the beauty will translate into pixels.

"Probably poorly. I think I'd juist look foolish with lights & ornaments hanging all over me." ;)

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

There's really only one way to find out, isn't there?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

And if the lights and ornaments don't work, we can try antlers and a red nose.