Merry belated Christmas and happy holidays to all those reading! It's been an enjoyable and relaxing holiday season so far (my Apple Watch kindly informed me that I completed one minute worth of exercise on Christmas Day yesterday)! Mulled wine has already been made and partially consumed (more will likely be made and consumed for the New Year), lots of food has been eaten, and friends and family have been visited. I'm on a Greyhound bus headed back to the city, as I write, after a slightly extended weekend in my hometown in Central New York. It was my first visit back during the holidays in two years... way too long! I wasn't able to see everyone while I was there, unfortunately, but I don't plan to go that long without a trip home for the holidays again. It's not easy taking time off work to travel home often (I don't have one of those cushy 9 to 5’s yet), but I think it definitely matters most around the holidays. From my family and friends to yours, I hope that your holidays have been and continue to be enjoyable and full of food and love!

As I've gotten older, I've realized that my family's holiday traditions have gotten a little more lax and less... well, traditional. Since we're so split up now, we don't really decorate the house or a tree, we don't exchange a lot of gifts or meet with a lot of extended family and our nuclear family isn't even always in attendance. Life is busy and complicated, but we're still able to enjoy the company and conversation of one another over a meal we prepared together and make it all worthwhile. It's easy to let family time fall by the wayside when you're apart for so long, but no matter how far away you are or how awkward family time can be, it's important!

When I still lived in Central New York, close to family and friends, my housemates and I stuck with the typical apartment Christmas traditions of ugly sweater wearing, card making and gift exchanging, real tree cutting and apartment decorating, and dinners with our respective families. Food was and always should be shared, so I started making traditional Swedish glögg to start introducing some new traditions into our American holidays and make our together-Christmastime more memorable and fun. Other than my obsession with Swedish culture and love of wine, I'm not sure what got me into it, but it's become an untraditional tradition for me ever since and I won't let that change.

When I moved to New York City back in 2014, my Christmases became yet less traditional, but still a lot of fun and memorable. My first Christmas Eve was spent cat-sitting for a friend with my boyfriend, Samson, while we watched classic Christmas movies and ate Dominos. Christmas Day was spent consuming amazing tacos, nachos, and horchata at a Mexican restaurant in Sunset Park. Glögg was slowly mulled later that day and enjoyed for the following few. These memories are still pretty fresh in my mind, even without all the photo evidence I dug up two years later. It was a great Christmas.

Tacos El Bronco in Sunset Park, Brooklyn

The following year, we spent Christmas in our new apartment in Crown Heights with our roommate, Mark. Our apartment was beautifully decorated by Samson and Mark, with almost no help from me (hey... very limited creative skills here, okay?). I actually have no memory or photo evidence of the food we ate, aside from glögg, but I know it had to be amazing because we had pretty high standards by that point. I am curious what we ate that day, but may never know...

Look how festive our apartment was, with stockings hung non-traditionally beneath our virtual Yule log. — Look how festive our apartment was, with stockings hung non-traditionally *beneath* our virtual Yule log.

This year, I finally spent Christmas with my mom, brothers, and friends that I grew up with. I spent Christmas Eve catching up with old friends over coffee and spending time with my mom, sorting out her various technical issues as well as upgrading her from a 2006 MacBook to a 2009 MacBook Pro (I knew this would ultimately make both our lives easier in the end). Christmas Eve ended with more technical issue resolving at my best friend's mom's house, whose wifi password I somehow always remembered until it somehow magically changed earlier this year. It's fixed now.

Christmas morning was spent at a friend's parents' where a breakfast of eggs, bacon, coffee, and homemade cinnamon rolls greeted us. There was gift unwrapping, fun stories, and humor... and yes, some technical skill flexing to help her mom set up her new iPad mini and her dad with some new Apple TV and FaceTime advice. Christmas dinner was small, but enjoyable at my brother and his wife's. We had shepherd's pie, Christmas ham, rolls, and ambrosia fruit salad. After dinner we all shared laughs over the wonder that is Snapchat's face swap filter before falling into a sleepy stupor. I left the glögg in Brooklyn, so none was had on Christmas Day, but I'm on my way back to it now!

The moral of this story is that you should find something you love about the holidays and share that with the people you love every year. It doesn't have to be the same every year, but find something that puts you in the spirit of the holidays, and of love, and let it brighten your days. The wintertime is tough for everyone here in the northeast... it's cold, the weather is gross, traveling is difficult and sometimes unsafe, but even a winter scrooge such as myself can find something to love about it all. It's all about the love of family and friends shared over food, coffee, heavy beers, and hot mulled wine. Happy holidays, everyone! 🎄☃️