You Have Memories Worth Remembering

“So,” I said to my husband Dan. “About Thanksgiving and Christmas … what are we going to do?” It was our first winter holiday season as newlyweds. And it was the year of COVID.

My favorite time of the year has always been from November through December. Except … this year, there would be no embracing of holiday traditions, and no gathering around festive meals with a large crowd. Our out-of-town kids and grandkids would be staying in their own little bubbles.

Dan and I tossed around a few ideas to help make this family-less winter holiday season memorable. Definitely outdoor winter play would be in the mix because we fell in love snowshoeing along the wilderness trails in the nearby Cascades—sitting on logs high up on the sides of mountains, unwrapping sandwiches, peeling oranges, and sharing a thermos of chai latte.

And so, the day before Thanksgiving, I cooked a full traditional, candlelit meal for the two of us. The next day, I reheated turkey and smashed potatoes covered in gravy, encased everything in layers of aluminum foil and stuffed the feast into an insulated lunch bag. I packed rolls and pumpkin pie, and we filled the thermos with hot apple cider.

Dan and I snow-shoed up to an old warming hut overlooking a deep valley. We found the perfect fallen log, and unwrapped our feast on a blue-sky Thanksgiving Day. And honestly, the food tasted better than it did the day before at our dining table.

Next hurdle: Christmas.

With this holy day bearing down on us—and again, no kids or grands—we decided to give a gift or do a random act of kindness on each of the first 25 days of December.

We delivered firewood from a local woodlot ministry to a single mom. Coffee shop gift cards were dropped off to the team at the cancer center who had taken good care of my first husband and Dan’s first wife.

We put together a craft kit for a home-schooling family with three young kiddos. I knitted a few soft winter scarves, and gave them to women standing in the cold on a street corner and near the shower truck—a truck designed and built by Dan and his friend that provides hot showers for the homeless in our community.

A co-worker made beautiful Christmas wreaths, which we purchased and distributed to friends—some of whom were experiencing their first Christmas as widows.

There were goodies that needed to be baked, and walnuts that needed to be toasted with brown sugar and cinnamon. Cookies were arranged on colorful holiday plates, jars were filled with toasted nuts and tied with curly ribbon, and the pumpkin loaves were wrapped in cellophane and tied with thick red ribbon.

And then the fun began as deliveries were made. Everywhere we went and every small gift we delivered was met with great delight. But not as much delight as filled our hearts.

Shauna Niequist wrote something in her little book, Celebrate Every Day, that makes me sit up and pay attention:

“The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you. And you have been given today.”

Instead of spending a good part of November and December feeling sad over missing out on family memory-making, we chose to make some gifts, and make some fun, and make the season special for someone else.  

Thanksgiving and Christmas in the year 2020—that first year of our marriage—will go down as one of the most memorable winter holiday seasons ever.