HOLIDAY PREP

It’s nearly Halloween. I have the big bowl of candy ready and the kids are coming home tomorrow night to carve the pumpkins and decorate. Anders is gone this week but will be home on Thursday at some point, though I don’t know if he’ll make it for the trick-or-treat hours. Kirstin hosted the annual (3x makes it a yearly event, right) AIC adult party on Friday. I didn’t really dress up at all, since I don’t really like dressing up. I stuck my bat deelybobbers on and wore a bright orange shirt. That’s as dressed up as I like to get. So no prize for best costume…that went to 4 friends who came as Handmaids. I was on the team that won the trivia quiz though, which was mostly questions about Halloween!

There’s a Halloween fika happening at work on Thursday. One of the guys in the Marketing department tried to rope me into organizing it. I think he was genuinely shocked when I said no. He thought since I was American I’d be all over it. The woman who used to do that kind of extra party/event planning for our department was from the UK, but she left Axis last year. I hate party planning even more than I dislike dressing up, so no thank you. Halloween is fun but I’m happy to just hand out candy and have the kids carve pumpkins.

What’s your favorite holiday? I think my relationship to holidays has changed a lot over the years. You have a different feeling about the big three: Halloween, Easter, Christmas…when you’re a kid, when the traditions and rituals are all important. Trick-or-treating, coloring eggs and baskets full of jellybeans, stockings hung from the fireplace. I loved all the holidays as a child, and all the trappings. And I thought it was importan as well as fun to forward those on to my children, so they grew up celebrating both the American and Swedish holidays.

But as an adult, with grown children, things are definitely different, at least when it comes to Halloween and Easter. I throw the Halloween decorations up the night before, and take them down the next day. We’ve managed to carve pumpkins every year, but every year now I wonder if it will be the last. I don’t think we colored eggs at Easter this year. Christmas is still pretty solid when it comes to decorations and traditions, at least. And I like the Swedish jul traditions as well, so it’s still fun to keep everything going, even if the kids aren’t home and things aren’t exactly the same.

Other holidays have definitely fallen by the wayside. We don’t celebrate 4th of July here, though we host the annual AIC BBQ. There’s no fireworks and no one else anywhere is waving American flags or wearing red, white and blue. St. Patrick’s was fun in Chicago when I was a young adult (even though I didn’t drink the green beer), but it’s not something I really think about here. Even April Fool’s is an afterthought. And New Year’s is sometimes a dinner with friends or a quiet evening just the two of us, but it’s not a big deal. The only other big holiday here is Midsummer and it’s also a fairly small affair nowadays, just us and a couple of friends.

The one I’m least willing to lose, apart from Christmas, is probably Thanksgiving, even though I sometimes think about scaling it down. We’ve already sent out the invitations to our friends and at this point will be 27 people, including my mom. It’s a little early this year since mom is here, but it’s the usual suspects and the usual menu. I bought the turkeys yesterday: 4 of them, frozen. It’s the one time of year I get stuffing and pumpkin pie (and turkey, actually). Maybe I’ll make spaghetti squash since we have so many people, if I can wangle some oven time away from the birds.

But first a few more weeks to get through. Sarah and Mom arrive next Monday, can’t wait, and tomorrow the kids and pumpkins. 🙂

Mood: happy
Music: Roachford—High on Love