Can it Be? Christmas in Only 3 More Days?

Every year, it seems, I trick myself into thinking I'll get this entire Christmas challenge conquered in only one month's time. And fail miserably.

And then we go and have a late Thanksgiving. C'mon, after all, four weeks before this Christmas, we still hadn't dressed our turkey for Thanksgiving. Time didn't fly this year. I'm sure the Grinch stole it.

While I'd love to ponder the wonders of Christmases long past—after all, thinking of what our ancestors were up to, this close to the holiday, is a wonderful exercise for those with the leisure time to lavish upon it—I'm beginning to realize we will soon be upon a fresh new research year. I'll be on my way to SLIG in only three weeks, and need to wrap up my research to-do list for those colonial Virginia ancestors. After that, I'll be back in Florida for another research trip, complete with visits to relatives who are quite happy to tell me everything they remember about their older relatives.

Besides that, there is a whole new research year stretching ahead of us. I can't afford to squander such research opportunities, but what should come next? As corny as it sounds, I've decided to take those traditional "twelve days of Christmas" and select twelve ancestors—three from each of the four family trees I'm working on—as my "twelve most wanted" ancestors for 2020. Each chosen ancestor will be featured in a vignette on one of the twelve days of Christmas 2019, starting late—or right on time, depending on how you count the twelve days—on December 26 (what, you didn't expect me to post on Christmas day itself, did you?) and leading right up to Epiphany.

Between now and then, though, I have no time left to bemoan all the Christmas cards I never got to send, or the last minute gifts I still need to snatch up Monday morning, before the rest of the shopping crowds wake up and get going. Christmas will be here, whether any of us are ready or not. The best strategy at this point is to just be ready to be there with all the people who mean the most to us. The rest will all sort itself out, somehow. Hopefully, with a bow on top.