Writing Lab: New Traditions Have a Way of Sneaking Up on You

It occurs to me that I picked the strangest possible month to start participating in one of BlogHer's post-a-day challenges. As anyone that's read my responses to any of the other prompts is probably figuring out, I tend to feel like a fish out of water around the holidays.

Despite being on the threshold of middle age, I don't have children, nor do I have really close-knit, lifelong ties to most of my other family members. I don't have a busy social life that finds me entertaining friends (or letting them entertain me) every year either.

All I really have is my relationship with my fiancé. We're not exactly people of means, nor do we connect with many other people around the holidays. We are very much used to being a team of two at this point and when I picture holiday traditions, I tend to picture a coming together with lots of other people, particularly family. That picture doesn't really apply to our life as we know it, so for a long time, I didn't think the word "tradition" applied to anything we liked to do either. That said, I actually like how these prompts are challenging me to take a closer look at that point of view and reevaluate a few things. I'm beginning to realize that that's something I really needed to do.

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Writing Lab: On Traditions, Family, and Filling the Void

I don't actually have children, nor have I ever wanted any. I've never developed even a hint of a maternal instinct or thought I would make a good mother. That said, I guess I'm realizing I've never really thought about anything to do with the holidays (or life in general) from that particular angle -- what it would all look like as one of the heads of a family.

I've never daydreamed about having someone to mentor and teach things to someday. I've never wondered what it would be like to have somebody else to inherit my traditions and keep them alive after I'm gone. I have no idea if it's odd for a 39-year-old woman to literally never have considered those things, but there it is just the same.

Seth has three children from his previous marriage. Back when we first got together, I assumed that sooner or later I would wind up developing some form of stepmother relationship with them at some point. But they're older now and seem to have little to no interest in either of us, so at this point, I pretty much just take it for granted that such relationships weren't part of God's plan for me. It's not even something that bothers me. It seldom to never crosses my mind and I don't feel like anything is missing from my life because I'm not really a parent in any capacity. It just is what it is like a lot of things in life.

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Writing Lab: Lights, Legs, and Zombies

The funny thing about Seth and me around the holidays is we aren't always consistent about things like decorating. Although we may stay put in the same spot for years at a time, there's been a tone of impermanence to our lives as far as where we live for quite some time now.

Hardships like lay-offs and serious illness have seen us moving a lot, living with family members when/if we need to, and so forth. That said, it's been a long time since we lived somewhere that truly felt like "home" -- someplace that felt like it was ours to decorate and leave our stamp on however we chose.

There have been many, many holidays where we just haven't been able to get into the holiday spirit at all because of that. On the down years, we will still very likely watch our Christmas movies or make something delicious to eat for Christmas dinner, but we might not really bother decorating. It just depends on where we both are mentally and emotionally at the point where it's time to start thinking about it.

Thankfully, a bit of that malaise that's sometimes surrounded the holidays for us has been lifting a bit in recent years, so we've been doing at least a bit of decorating. As with everything we do in life, we have our own unique spin we put on things that really feels like us.

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There are two kinds of people in this world -- those that think Halloween is a single day that comes once a year and those that treat Halloween like an all-the-time affair. Seth and I are the second type. We are very much into things like horror movies, Gothic novels, creepy folk tales, and ghost stories. (Seth actually runs a very popular horror website called MoreHorror.) A lot of our Halloween-themed items stay up all year round and get a special holiday treatment.