Compost Studios

Here in Belgium, Christmas slips quietly onto the scene without drama. There are no bright lights and gaudy displays rising in the dusk in November. December arrives without pomp and circumstance and Great Expectations for the Best Holiday Ever. There is no endless reporting on retails sales and prices, no joyless commentary on consumer confidence and weighty predictions on whether Christmas will be a boon or a bust for the economy.

The store windows in Belgium may sport some seasonal decorations, but in early December, the houses remain tight-lipped and secretive, only a few whispering cheer with a sedate wreath on the door. There aren’t stacks of Christmas trees looking for homes yet. The women don’t wear holiday sweaters or pins, the Christmas music is silenced, and there are no parades winding through the narrow streets. A Saturday trip to the mall reveals plenty of parking and reasonable lines at the cash registers. It’s as if the news that Christmas is coming is an unconfirmed rumor from questionable sources sparking a “let’s wait and see” attitude. This sense of watching and waiting actually suits the spirit of Advent best.

Most of the time, I love this aspect of Christmas in Belgium. The way the days grow short, the nights grow long, and Christmas dawns as the year sets fills me with quiet contentment. Still, there are moments when I miss the glitter and shine of an over-the-top American Christmas: the piped music, the glowing displays, the decorations hung on every surface, the endless ads and commercials, the caroling, parties, parades, and community events. In America, the fuse is lit in November and the holiday celebrations explode like nightly fireworks for the entire month of December.

My American friend S, an expat in Belgium, confessed to having more than 20 jumbo plastic boxes of Christmas decorations (I have fewer than five Rubbermaids now, not including the tree ornaments). S has five tree toppers and two Christmas trees to hold all her ornaments. Ho, ho, ho!

I used to be like that. In the U.S., it took me at least two days to decorate the interior of the house. First I had to pull out all the boxes, then pack away my everyday stuff to make room for the careful placement of all the holiday decorations I’d accumulated. I trimmed every door and window, elaborately covered the banister in greenery, baby’s breath, and gingerbread garland, had holiday arrangements of one sort or another on every flat surface, swapped out the dishes, china, and table linens with Christmas patterns, put holiday sheets on the bed, and yes, I admit it, even put a holiday soap dispenser in the bathroom.

The irony: I embraced a rustic, natural decorating look that was absolutely unnatural in the level of effort it took to pull off. Sure, it was pretty, but as time went on, I got crankier and crankier with the effort it took to roll out Christmas at our house, and so I started scaling back. When we moved to Belgium, I continued weaning myself off of excessive holiday spirit and left a lot of my Christmas stuff behind. And you know what? Even with far less effort and ornaments, it feels no less Christmas-y to me than it did before.

As I navigate middle age, I find myself working at simplifying all areas of my life. It seems we spend our 20s and most of our 30s building a lifestyle: finding a partner and social circle, maybe having kids and accumulating material things, traditions, activities, accomplishments, and expectations. Then just as we start to feel a bit smothered by it all, we tip into our 40s and start shedding belongings, relationships, and all the “shoulds” that drain our energy. We desperately want to get down to essentials and devote ourselves only to those things and people that really feed our soul. Then again, maybe that’s just me.

Tell me about yourself--what does Christmas look like in your corner of the world? Are you ramping up, scaling back or doing things the way you’ve always done them? Do you crave less, thrill with more, or just want something different?

December 6, 2006