Wrapping up festivities

It's all over after this week, the festive season I mean.  Once we reign in the New Year on Tuesday night, we're done with parties, family get-togethers and festivity until next November on Thanksgiving when the excitement builds again.  Some families get together and celebrate Easter, like mine in Australia, but there's no chance of us getting over there this time so aside from the sporadic yearly celebrations of St Patty's Day or the 4th July... my season of festivities is officially over after Tuesday.

We cram a lot into December, Will and I.  His birthday and our anniversary meander right in between all of the Christmas and NYE hype.  When you add certain family drama and personality clashes that are strewn in on top of it all, it becomes quite the headache.  This year, we thought we'd be happier if we were on our own, trying to make our festive season 'special' for ourselves.  Instead we found that drama, albeit tense and horrible, is part and parcel of belonging to a family.  Without said drama or the personality clashes, occasional drunken outbursts or temper tantrums of previous Christmas's, we were just alone in a peaceful desert - having a blast, but feeling somewhat hollow; just another trip away and not like Christmas at all.  

Jane Austen wrote that arrogance is an affliction of youth and if that's the case, we must be growing up.  The lessons we've learnt are that we can't change naught but ourselves and that family is the one constant in our lives that we can't do anything about.  The only thing worse than tantrums and tension is not having them around at all.