Merry Christmas!

 

December 30, 2021

Merry Christmas!

It seems so strange writing this so long after the fact, it has been weeks since Christmas, but our life has been shall we say hectic to say the least. I was considering just skipping ahead but decided to at least make an attempt to catch up before scrapping big chunks of what has happened in the past six weeks.

The holiday season was something of a blur. Due to Covid there still were not the amount of normal holiday events and parties, but the island seemed to make up for it in the outdoor decorating, lighted bike rides and by selling out the entire run of Conch trains and trolleys this year for holiday lights tours.

A new addition this year were the plethora of rented golf carts that seemed to be driving by the house pretty much nonstop every evening after sunset. The town was obviously packed and renting your own golf cart to tour the island has become a suddenly very popular pastime. We had single golf carts as well as huge groups with multiple carts touring together and about everything in between.

We were once again a very popular stop, which is great because we really don’t have to go anywhere, and we just let the crowds and many friends just come to us. So we had a multitude of bike tours, trains, trolleys, golf carts and just pedestrians stopping by every night. For many of the evenings, I did something that I had never done before which was putting on the Santa Suit that I had ordered for our holiday card and standing outside the house to greet visitors. It was strange and weirdly uncomfortable to suddenly have so many people wanting to pose for photos and interact, but I eventually got into the spirit. Kathy had to keep reminding me to stay in character and say things like Ho,Ho Ho. 

Once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t so bad and our entire neighborhood became something of a nightly holiday party, as holiday, as holiday light displays are in abundance and often over the top, with homeowners hanging about outside to greet the constant parade of visitors out to see the lights.

Christmas itself was another low key, stay at home sort of affair as Kathy and I pretty much made a day of hanging out at home with our cats and contacting our family and close friends using Facetime or the good old phone call.