Pink Christmas In Bloggingham

Christmas and divorce do not fare well. At least, that has been my experience.

You lose traditions that once fused your life into a neat little holiday package. With the stroke of the magistrate's pen your life is rearranged in huge ways and a million small nuances suddenly have nowhere to live. Sorry, lady. You just lost the right to congregate with unwelcome relatives from both sides of failing marriage, fume, fuss over Christmas scheduling, pretend there is a Santa Claus even when your child is eighteen, attend company parties and do the couple thing, watch your husband crawl around the roof and hang lights on the dormers,and share a burnt Christmas turkey with a family who dares not notice the meal looks like blackened cajun poultry. You just lost the aforementioned priviledge to make memories with said missing family.

Bad memories, good memories, sad memories, wonderful memories.

Forever memories.

Two signatures on a single piece of paper doth not erase a lifetime of holiday imprints.
You do, in essence, sign away your tradition.

Christmas and New Year's is not an easy time to be single.

So, the first year I was faced with staring at the family-made Christmas tree holding over twenty years of memories and baby boy designed ornaments with tiny little handprints in white plaster and his smiling baby face in a tiny little ornament frame, I decided to make my own holiday ambience. To celebrate my independence. To express my personality.
To disengage from "we" and fully embrace "me."

Time to make new traditions.

Today I opened the box and took in a familiar aroma. Pink Christmas.

My Christmas.

A box full of a memorable shopping trip I took one cold December day four years ago - all by myself. My mission? Reinvent a lifetime of togetherness known as Christmas with the family..... into Christmas with me.

I had to make a new Christmas.

I needed a new tree, a new color, new bobbles, new adventure, unorthodox frivolity, joy, beauty, handpicked reflections of the soul I had become....... and for Heaven's sakes, no red and green.

Prissy things. Purses. Frilly lamp ornaments. Perfume bottles. Lace. Pearls.

Elegant ribbons. Gold-trimmed velvet balls. Beads.

Lots of crystal and fluff.
Phermones and single girl memories.

Sensual.

Silly.

Secret sacredness full of me.

To honor and preserve the ornamental scrapbook of my married life for my son and grandson, I hung the old ornaments on a "past" tree. I still have a blue-trimmed tree in my piano room with the family traditional ornaments from my once-married life, a totally crystal ornament tree in my boudoir with tiny white lights, a small multi-colored 3 foot tree in the corner of the kitchen, a red and gold tree downstairs with the chimney stockings (near the dungeon) and then there's.........this.....

Pink Christmas. In my living room.

With candles and twinkling clear lights in unlikely places.

Four years after divorce and I am experiencing yet another holiday without a significant other. Three of the last four have been the same. No silly stockings full of intimate secrets and no candlelit moments making out errr.....opening gifts under the tree giggling on the floor politely sipping eggnog listening to Bon Jovi Bing Crosby in your specially shopped for Christmas nightie with white fluffy sleeves proper little black pencil skirt and matching knee-high leather and suede boots with 3-inch heels boring pumps.

Sipping white wine.

I'll be wearing my pencil skirt, mind you, but in all probability, pouring a glass for one.

But that's OK. I am ready.

Good thing I made that solo shopping trip.

My sister and I also took a wonderful Christmas trip to the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina the first holiday I spent alone after my divorce. We found these gorgeous crystal bell ornaments. They are large, intricately made, pure, simple, sparkling.....reflecting the lights inside and out like a prism.

They remind me of grace. Authenticity. And new beginnings.

These will go on Bloggingham's door.....lighted and ready for a new adventure in a new year with a new person.

Me.