Can We Have A Christmas Do-Over?

I was sitting in the choir loft at church Sunday as we celebrated Epiphany (a day early) and it felt like my heart was saying not-ready-not-ready-not-ready.

Usually the rhythms of the church year help me feel more centered and like the Christmas season lasts for long enough. We have four Sundays of Advent, 12 days of Christmas, and Epiphany, after all. That should be plenty of time!

But this year, I missed an Advent Sunday because our whole family of six was suffering from a bad stomach virus.

I still wasn’t sure I was completely back to normal when I was hit on December 16th with what I assume was the flu. I had a high fever and barely exited my bed for three days. I started recovering just in time for my 11-year-old son to get hit with it. We both spent all of Christmas break coughing. And my eight-year-old daughter started running a fever on Christmas Eve, which means she and my husband stayed home from our Vespers service that night, breaking my heart a little.

The only Christmas cookies I made were because they had been promised to school events. The whole break has been shadowed by my chest coughing and feeling miserable and totally not up to par.

I know many moms have also been dealing with the multitude of sicknesses traveling around this year. I’m not alone in this boat. So do you think we can request a Christmas do-over?

Now that I’ve found my energy again, I’d like to re-do December, preferably without the many, many, MANY concerts my children were singing and playing in.

We wrapped 24 children’s books up to read every night with my littlest, the eight-year-old. When I went to pack them away, there were still three wrapped up. I want to read them every night, like we intended!

I want to have the time and energy to play the board games we had picked out for our annual family Board Game Advent, one each evening. (We did play them all eventually, but it took us until January 2nd.)

I want to make all the cookies, maybe go caroling, and above all, just feel like we had a Christmas season and not a “sickness and concerts” season.

(This year will forever be remembered as the one where one daughter threw up in the church narthex during the boys’ choir concert and one was throwing up violently at her school formal dance.)

So who is with me? With what will almost certainly be an extended winter break due to snow, who wants to have a little more Christmas? We could hang up the twinkle lights, bake cookies, and try to bring some joy to dreary January.