Jack o lantern.jpg

I’ve always been a holiday kind of girl. I just love the good excuse to step away from the same old, same old and embrace the reason to feel festive. Yes, I realize that more evolved beings don’t need Hallmark to tell them when to be joyful. But the reality is that as much as I love fun, it often feels like the most optional item on my to-do list.

What hit me recently is that I am much more deliberate about my displays of spirit than I used to be when I was younger. Finding nooks in my home to adorn throughout the year with pumpkins, turkeys, snowmen, lace hearts and bunnies, used to be an automatic. If the calendar read October 1st, it was time to dig out the witches from storage. On November 1st, it was the pilgrims’ turn to make their pilgrimage to my tabletop. Eventually the bunnies would hop to their turn in the spotlight. It was a given.

And now it isn’t.

I feel as though I have hit an age when many people around me – and myself included – are starting to feel the burdens of time. We have full days with the demands of both work and family, and it so tempting to go insular. To cut out the extraneous.

Recognizing this makes me feel sad. And for a gal who was voted “Most School Spirit” in junior high and high school, it’s just plain wrong.  So, although my decorating sometimes feels a little forced to the now middle-aged me, I know that not decorating would be an acceptance that I’d lost my spirit. And that is unacceptable.

As I’ve been walking my dog on these crisp fall mornings of late, this realization makes me see the pumpkins and witches that some of my neighbors put out in a new light. Their ghouls and goblins that hang from their porch are now a symbol to me that the people within are not only still open to joy, but actively plan for it.

I hope you will, too.