Weddings, Christmas, and What It All Really Means
I got really good at packing some time ago. I can bust out a well rounded suitcase in a reasonable amount of time. And unlike many a girlie girl, I can survive on the basics. For example: I abhor needing to bring more than one pair of shoes on any trip. What a pain. Shoes take up so much room.
The point, you see, is that I have a wedding to attend over our Christmas holiday. And that means one more damn pair of shoes in my suitcase. Fundamentally, I don’t mind since I don’t want to wear tennis shoes with a nice dress. But, you know. Shoes. Geez.
We will be staying with Brandon’s mom over Christmas and making a trip two hours away to my home town to go to one of my best friend’s weddings. In my personal and imperfect opinion, the modern wedding should be done away with. What a waste of time, money, effort, and ugly pink napkins! We have gotten it all wrong. With so much energy put into planning the ‘big day’, everyone - the bride and groom especially - forgets what is actually happening. They forget the meaning, the essence, and the importance of their undertaking. Kinda like Christmas. And, like Christmas, the wedding should be simplified down into a meaningful celebration of love.
It’s just my opinion, but I think everyone should elope. Lol. And if you want to include your family, let them come with you. Take youself, your spouse-to-be, some nice but simple dress clothes, and the few people in your life who are really important to you and have a small, truly intimate wedding. It really does make the entire experience much more… holy… special… real and true. Make it fun and stress free for everyone. Choose a place that will make a cake for you and set up a nice and simple place for the ceremony. Go somewhere that strikes your fancy, like the Caribbean, or Tahiti, or Alaska, or Ireland, or somewhere with striking mountains, or somewhere that means something to you. Hell, do it in your backyard.
I rant about this because soooo many of my friends have stressed over wedding PLANNING. Ugh. Middle class America does not have enough money to make as much of a hulabaloo about their wedding day as they would like. And more often than not someone goes into debt over one day, three hundred coordinated napkins, glitter the color of the bride’s eyes, hair, makeup, tuxedos, rentals, blah blah blah blaaaah.
Do I sound jaded or cynical? I truly don’t mean to. I just know from personal experience that no stress and basic planning really make for a wonderful wedding day. I don’t do anything for Christmas that doesn’t mean something to me. I keep traditions that I value, put up decorations I love, and never stress over doing more than I can handle. Weddings should be the same. It’s time we realize that the marital celebration has been commercialized almost as heavily as Christmas. Our ideas of ‘the perfect day’ are not really our own.
Now that I am a parent, I have had to decide what I am going to teach my children about Christmas. Will we pretend Santa is real? Will we open only one present on Christmas Eve? What traditions will we carry on every year? Will it only be about presents… or something more? As I asked myself all of these things, I realised my own answers to these questions. To me, Christmas is about love. Santa, like God (for me), is just an expression of love, compassion, giving, and selflessness. We don’t have to have the tree or watch ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ on t.v. every year for it to be Christmas. I want my kids to know that every year around this time we will just be doing our best to show our love for each other and everyone else on earth.
