Every year I hear that “Christmas is really about the kids.” Makes me want to scream “Bah Humbug!”

The truth is, Christmas is about spending time with people you love. It doesn’t really matter who they are, or hold old they are.

To me, Christmas is about BEING a kid again. It is about watching cartoons like “Rudolph” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” curled up on the couch with my husband, that remind me of my own childhood. It is about that wild anticipation on Christmas Eve, wondering what “Santa” has brought me, but also about to explode from keeping secrets from every single person I love!

To be honest, some of my favorite moments every holiday season are spending time with just my husband. We have our own little traditions to make the holiday special.

We make a day out of cutting down our tree. Sure, we are almost always the only people traipsing around the field without kids in tow. But we feel thankful that we have our lives instead of theirs! I know our stress level is much more under control than the frazzled parents trying to calm yet another temper tantrum.

We get the tree into the stand and string the lights together, and we’ve never even gotten into a fight about it in 7 years of marriage! Each ornament means something special to us, and as we decorate we reminisce about who gave it to us, or where we were when we purchased it. Our tree is almost like a record of our lives. We can spend hours gazing at it, sipping my special hot chocolate from holiday cups.

We spend hours in the car each year, visiting our families in another state, and we enjoy that time alone to talk, look out the window at the beauty of the snow, and listen to Christmas music on the radio (I am often known to sing too loud, and badly).

We always do “our Christmas” when we return home from the holidays, which is easily a week after December 25. I love how Chris pokes at his gifts under the tree, asking me cryptic questions like “Is this something I asked for? Or did you go out on your own for this one?”

We also enjoy spending New Year’s Eve together, making our favorite homemade appetizers and waiting for the ball to drop. We “picnic” on the living room floor with our kitties. Since we were married, we have always celebrated alone, except for one year when my sister came to visit. We have never minded it. In fact, we look forward to it!

The holiday season is a time of magic, wonder, and joy for all of us. Children don’t have exclusive rights on that! (And neither do parents)

So this Christmas, take some time to enjoy the person you married, and fall in love with them all over again.