Yep, it’s Christmas.

My grocery list yesterday included 2 kinds of flour, molasses, 3 kinds of sugar and candy canes.

Yep, it’s Christmas.

My gift shopping is just about done. I will have to actually walk into a brick and mortar store this week for the last item, I suppose. I don’t like traffic, lines or crowds, which are overwhelming this time of year, so I avoid the shops if I can. I’ve gotten truly amazing deals online with almost no effort. I don’t buy anything fancy, just a lot of Legos and books.

Although we got our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we’ve had a lot of distractions as well. I organized my children’s school’s book fair. My husband and kids competed in Spartan races last weekend. We attended a few Art Basel shows. My kids have big school projects we are busy completing. I’ve been writing a contributing chapter for a book about rape culture and getting ready for my new book launch in January. Not very Christmassy at all.

But do you know what? That’s perfect.

All of these disparate activities have kept me from having that nauseating overdose of Christmas I dread. You know, when the cookies are cloying and the carols are annoying, and your heart beats bah humbug, bah humbug, bah humbug! So far, by keeping my normal life full speed ahead, I haven’t had too much Christmas. My decorations are charming. I enjoy reading our big pile of Christmas storybooks and singing carols with my kids. Last Saturday night our dinner was brought to us by the letter P, and we dined on pumpkin pancakes and popcorn while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. These small doses always leave me wanting a little more.

I’ve learned to leave the magic to the kids, rather than playing Oz behind the curtain.

They are six and seven and excited as can be.

Their sweet high voices belt out, Jingle bells, Batman smells, and Glory to the New York king. They are wallpapering our dining room with holiday artwork including baby Jesus, a present bigger than a Christmas tree, and koalas and tigers sporting Santa hats. We eat breakfast only after they tear off a link in a paper chain marking the days until Christmas. The chain is impossibly long for them and terribly short to me. We end our days right next to the chains where we take a reckoning of their behavior on a chart marked with either stars or x’s. Mostly stars means a weekend Christmas event: a movie or driving to see lights. This week it will mean 10 minutes of snow play at our town festival, a thrill for our tropical kids.

I didn’t intend for this post to be a journal entry, but that’s what it has morphed into. I wrote to tell you this. The more I keep the holidays at bay, the more I love them. The more I disconnect from our consumerist culture, the more connected I feel to my family, which brings me right back to the center of it all: joy, peace, love and hope.

I wish you the same.