“Mommy, remember when we did holidays every Saturday? When are we going to do that again?” 

“Just after Christmas, sweetie. Just after Christmas.” I was so tickled that he remembered and wanted to do it again.

So January and February are typically hard months for me. Advent and Christmas get me through December, but as I turn the corner of the year there they stand–staring me down again. Twin pillars of heavy, grey, stubborn, cold resolutely casting their shadow over my internal world.

Last year as I anticipated them with the added layer of pandemic-stress draped over everything, I knew I had to do something. “OK guys, Mom needs some help,” I told my family. “I need a holiday a week to get me through till March. We’ve got Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day, but I need help making up the rest.” And that is how–with a little help from my friend, Jen–our “made-up holidays,” as I like to affectionately call them, came to be. It’s not really the best name, because some of them we didn’t actually make up… we just made up celebratory activities for our family around them. But they helped me tremendously, and ended up being a big hit with our kids… so we’re doing them again, and this year I thought I would blog them.

Whether you read just for entertainment or to find ways to brave the bleak cold yourself, I hope these next collection of posts inject some fun and lightheartedness into your weeks.

The most obvious and natural first step for me was extending Christmas past the 25th. Prior to 2020 this just meant leaving the tree up till Epiphany, but in the interests of ramping up festivities I’ve added:

● A basket of small individually wrapped numbered treats for the 12 days of Christmas. Turns out ALDI beat me to this, which would have been much simpler, but now you know.

● Daily moving our figures of the wise men around the house on their journey to the nativity leading up to Epiphany.

● Brewing a cup of tea, lighting a candle, and using this tool to guide some personal reflection and prayer.