I've been emailing my sister a list of "New Things We Can Do To Make Our Probably Two-Person Christmas Not Suck" and I'm here to suggest that this is the time for that overpriced luxury tea/chocolate/bath products Advent calendar you consider and then reject every year

I'm also trying to get a virtual all-cousins gingerbread house contest going (a way to loop in even the long-distance ones we wouldn't see at Christmas!) where we all buy the same kit at Target, fancy them up, take photos, and make our parents/aunts & uncles judge them blind

Also, rather than either of us getting a giant real tree and hauling up nine thousand boxes of ornaments from the basement, she's getting a small tabletop-sized living tree and we're going to decorate it only with things we make ourselves, kindergarten crafts-style

also if you haven't whipped out the white paper and scissors and made the fuck out of some paper snowflakes in a really long time, I recommend covering every single window with them

oh, the other thing I thought of, feel free to steal if you like, is that I'm buying every household in our family one bottle of really good champagne, which we will all save until next year and then pop the corks and toast when we are all together again on Christmas Eve 2021

then it's like, a reminder that this is just for one year, we'll be together again soon, and when we are, we will pour the champagne and toast to being rid of the hell that was 2020