08 Dec Holiday Decorating Traditions | Kathy Norton
Our resident interior design expert, Kathy Norton shares how her Christmas 2020 looks a bit different this year. More heartwarming than ever!
So decorating my house for the Holidays this year took on a whole new meaning. I mean usually it’s what is pretty, what is trendy, how it goes with my décor. Not this year. 2020 has shown all of us what is important, what matters and how the traditions we build year after year with our families shape future holidays.
So let’s start with the day after Thanksgiving. My boys live in Colorado and California and Connor the oldest was coming home for Christmas. This year it will be a small gathering, Grandma and Grandpa are not traveling up for the holidays, extended family not getting together, you get it.
So, the day after Thanksgiving I was Facetiming with my oldest, Connor, in L.A. and he asked how the decorating was going. He knows that this is usually a really big day for me, I am Kathy Christmas after all. I told him that since there wasn’t going to be many visitors that I was going to pare down my decorating. Not going to do 6 trees, 3 days of greenery, all levels of the house, etc. Complete silence on Connor’s end of the phone. He says, “Mama, its Covid 2020, I need this to be better than ever. It’s been a tough year for all of us. Can you do Kathy Christmas but times 3?”
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I didn’t think it would really matter to my 30 year old son or to the rest of the family. Boy was I wrong. He craved the nostalgia of a happier year, he wanted the tradition, the lights, the festivities, even if it was just us.
So decorating this year took on a whole new meaning when it came to making the house festive. I didn’t do the white lights and gold and silvers, I skipped the glamour and glitz. I dug through the storage room and found the decorations that the kids had made in Elementary school, the “our first Christmas” ornament, the “Babies first Christmas”, all the mismatched and well loved ornaments from years gone by. Then I mixed in my Grandma’s antique vintage ornaments and found some pom pom garland and our treasured Christmas stockings. These Christmas stocking were hand made by my Grandma Agnes, she sewed every sequin on with arthritic hands and hand stitched every embroidered stitch with her cloudy, almost blind eyes. What you can’t see in these beauties is the love she put into them. She lived to be 100 and she was so important to all of us, especially Connor. She took care of Connor after he was born while I went back to work and she rocked that colicky baby for hours. They had a bond that was amazing.
But I digress. The Christmas tree was going to be lit with 3 layers of brightly colored light and the mantel hung with the stocking that Grandma made. I thought I did pretty well bringing the childhood joy back into the house. But when Connor came home from California and saw the difference…he stood in awe and with a lump in his throat, he said “Mom, now this is a Kathy Christmas.”
So you see that Christmas decorations don’t come from a store, they are a collection of memories, of nostalgia and family togetherness.
Merry Christmas!
Who is Kathy Norton?
Kathy is our resident free spirit fashionista who is all about acceptance and spreading love through her happy, high-energy personality. In her free time, you’ll find her shopping, traveling, listening to classic rock, and hanging out with her family and friends.
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