Have you noticed how every holiday is highly amped up these days? When I was a kid, Christmas and Easter were the holidays to decorate. Halloween called for cardboard cutouts of black cats and witches taped to our front windows, but certainly no lights. For Valentine’s Day, we’d make construction paper hearts and call it a day.
My how things have changed.
Recently, a quick stroll into my local dollar store literally days after Christmas ended reminded that Valentine’s Day was right around the corner — and better not forget about St. Patrick’s Day, either. Better buy something now! The shelves buckled under the weight of red and white lights, plastic cupids, various sizes of overstuffed hearts, lit-up leprechauns, pots of gold, green hats, and even outdoor shamrock lights.
It was a little over the top, I thought. I’d gladly grab my gift wrap and garbage bags that I went in there for and call it a day. As I picked out a cute birthday bag, I remembered how my kids and I would draw nearly every day after school. We would create our own holiday decorations and hang them proudly on the wall above our dining room table. If a holiday was not up and coming, we’d cut out letters and write their names or a favorite saying. These were some of the best times. And it’s so funny that I can barely remember, but I want to recall it all — every song we played while we painted, every meal we had afterwards, every photo of the wall each month. I want to remember the pint-sized hands and voices that painted my life so beautifully every day.
Back then, we even celebrated the smaller holidays like President’s Day and the first day of summer. It didn’t have to be a real holiday either. Making up our own celebrations was all the more fun.
Every year, we had a fall party. This started out on the first day of fall, but as global warming took the lead and gave us warmer days, we delayed our fall parties until the first day it was 40 degrees or less. You see, our fall party rules were that we would have cocoa and cookies outside until we got so cold, we had to come inside. It was the way we said “goodbye” to the warm temperatures and ushered in our love for the cold weather to come.
Even Groundhog Day was a special day, partly due to the fact that my parents lived in Punxsutawney, Pa., home of the groundhog, for several years. My kids loved visiting them during the groundhog festivities, the town’s one true claim to fame. Now there’s a group of people who know how to celebrate, even during freezing temps, in blizzards, in knee-high deep snow — at 7 am no less!
As the rush of my kids’ childhoods hit me in the arts and crafts aisle, I did an about-face and headed straight towards those smiling leprechauns and shamrock toys, because even though my kids are older, I have yet to find a home or classroom or workplace that wasn’t made better by joyful decorations. So “celebrate we will, ’cause life is short but sweet for certain.”
Wishing you a very happy St. Patrick’s Day and whatever other day you celebrate this month!
Danielle Sullivan, a mom of three, is a writer and editor living in New York City.
