My Holiday Wish

No matter what holiday you celebrate it should be a time of comfort and tradition. My family celebrates Christmas and after my cancer diagnosis and subsequently, both of my parents also get a cancer diagnosis, I feel that the holidays are that much more important. Here is how I celebrate the holidays and what traditions we have come up with. Most have been started after my diagnosis!

My small family

My small family is made up of my parents, my twin sister, and myself. When I was diagnosed in 2014, I was unmarried but dating and we had no plans to have children. My sister, also dating someone did not have children. Now that I am 7 years into this diagnosis I am happily married, and my sister now has 4 children. When she was pregnant with her first child, I prayed to still be alive to meet him. I have now lived long enough to meet all 4 of her children. It can be said that I have kept up with the available treatment options for my type of cancer.

Keeping holiday traditions

We keep our holiday traditions simple. For the day of celebrations, my husband and I split our time between his family and mine. We get together with his family on Christmas day for dinner and mingling. We go to my sister's house in the morning to watch the kids open presents and have breakfast/brunch. Hashbrown casserole, quiche and mimosas are on the menu!

A few other small traditions that we have come up with over the years include Christmas lights watching, taking holiday-themed family pictures, wearing matching pajamas, and visiting a Christmas market.

We get together with my husband’s mom to go out and look at the home decorations in the neighborhood. We have found this is best paired with a hot chocolate bomb.

Taking holiday pictures

I love taking pictures and we make sure to get a good holiday family photo (my husband, me, and the pups), and this year I was able to use it on our Christmas cards.

Matching pajamas

There are many places where you can get matching pajamas and I have found the best at Target. This year we have red and black buffalo print pajama bottoms to wear on Christmas Eve.

Visiting Christmas markets

The last tradition that we have started since diagnosis has been visiting the Christmas markets. There have often been so many to choose from. My favorite is the ChristKindlmarket in Chicago but sometimes it is not plausible to get into the city. We have also been to local vendor shows and other smaller markets. This year we will travel down to Carmel, IN, and visit that market. The pandemic has definitely put a wrench in this tradition, and we were not able to do any of these last years so it is nice to be able to go this year even with all of the covid precautions.

My holiday wish

My holiday wish for anyone reading this blog is that you are happy and healthy. I wish that all cancer patients get to celebrate however they choose. I pray for a world where cancer is no longer here. Please share with me in the comments what you do for the holidays!