Christmas Decorations, Dinners, Presents and Books by Lavender

I like celebrating and every opportunity I get to do so makes me very happy. In the Netherlands we celebrate Saint Nicholas on December 5^th. As he always brought a lot of presents when I was younger I didn’t receive presents from Santa. My brother’s birthday is on Boxing Day and in my country we celebrate that as the second day of Christmas. My parents decided that it would be less confusing for him if we wouldn’t receive any Christmas presents. Of course we decorated the house and we had special Christmas dinners, but it was more of a time of getting together than a time of presents.

When I was 19 I moved out of my childhood home to move in with my boyfriend. I celebrated Christmas my own way for the first time. I love colours, so we decided to have a bright and happy Christmas tree. The decorations were a gift from me to my then boyfriend who’s now my husband. Ever since that first year we’ve spent a lot of time decorating our home and we do celebrate Christmas with presents now.

My honeymoon was a Christmas holiday to the Alsace. It was a special and magical

holiday. Since then we return to the Alsace as often as possible to do some Christmas shopping and to get into the Christmas mood visiting the markets and all the beautiful Christmas stores. A trip to Germany with the exact same purpose is also on the agenda. In Brugge there are also some beautiful Christmas shops and we hardly skip a short winter trip to that romantic city. Each of the baubles and decorations we bought is special for us and has a great memory attached to it.

I love choosing presents and wrapping them. I’m exchanging Christmas presents with my friends and family. Now that my brother is older we do exchange presents, but still not a lot. Just something nice to show we love each other as that is the most important thing of all. For me Love and romance are what’s most important about Christmas.

Last year my husband made me an advent calendar which he filled with sweets and charms for my charm bracelet. It was such a sweet surprise and it filled my heart with joy for the entire month of December. Due to family circumstances my Christmas plans this year are different. Still my husband and I are making the best of the celebrations and are trying to give a bit of warmth and happiness to all the people around us.

I feel lucky and blessed that there are presents under my Christmas tree. They are from my friends with whom I’ve exchanged presents for years. I’ve met several great people since I started blogging, so I had a few extra presents to send this year. That’s fantastic and it fills my heart with joy. Friendship is a great treasure and that’s absolutely wonderful.

Because I love sending Christmas mail I’m going to send happy mail to a reader of Simona’s lovely blog. Thank you Simona for having me and also for your great friendship!

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