Every couple looks forward to their first Christmas spent together.  The warmth of the season, the snuggles and presents (my love language is gifts for sure!) are all sure to get your heart aflutter.   

We were so looking forward to our first Christmas as a married couple.  We got a tree, retrieved ornaments we had acquired growing up, and were ready to decorate.

However, there are two tree camps.  One insists that Christmas trees are to be aesthetically pleasing and altogether thematic and beautiful, while the other maintains that the quirky ornaments created and acquired throughout childhood should have the canvas of the tree.  We were a combination of both, but ultimately we were more so on different sides. 

It’s one of the many things we had to sort out once we were married and started living together.  The issue of who’s cleaning what was something we tried to anticipate (Amanda HATES dishes, so Matt has kindly obliged…but that means she get the bathroom chore!), but we didn’t see decorating the tree to be a potential issue in our marriage. 

The same thing goes for Christmas music that gets you in the spirit.  Amanda’s family always listened to the classics, like Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, and instrumentals (as well as a couple fun ones!).  Matt’s family, having strong roots in Colorado ranching and the agriculture industry, always played Alabama Christmas and a specific off-beat Transiberian Orchestra song that Amanda cringes to when she hears Matt play it (because if we’re being honest, there’s no way we’d ever hear it anywhere else!).   

We ended up compromising as best we could, as it was quite impossible to have both of us win otherwise.  We put the ornaments on the tree, including the large Quasimodo ornament Matt can’t get enough of, but Amanda gets preference in their placement.   

Fortunately in the case of music, one of our favorite artists came out with a fantastic Christmas album the November of our first year of marriage.  It has since become a Christmas staple for us (but every once in a while Amanda still listens to “Thistlehair, the Christmas bear, spreading the Good News everywhere…” from time to time with Matthew).   

At the very least, we knew that we would be spending Christmas together, whether we had lots of gifts to give that year or not so many, and that was the part we cherished most.  And the eggnog 😉