Last Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. This is always memorable because, in addition to a Christmas Eve service, we wind up attending church on Christmas morning.
For obvious reasons, this impacts the flow of our day. I happen to love when Christmas falls on a Sunday; attending church Christmas Day feels like an intuitive event given the spiritual foundation of the holiday. This year we found a great rhythm and the mid-morning break from presents served to extend our gift-opening and food-feasting!
Christmas won’t fall on a Sunday again for 11 years – 2033. (In 2027, Christmas is on a Saturday, but is followed by a leap year, so we jump right to Monday in 2028.)
My immediate thought? Abby will be almost 23 years old.
What will life look like? Christmas 2022 she was in middle school. By Christmas 2033, she will have completed high school and, potentially, a full university degree.
I got married the year I turned 22 and had my first child when I was 23.
Yikes!
Looking at time from different perspectives can be fascinating…and shocking. The days can feel long, but my goodness the years are short.
Especially when measured at the speed of Christmases.
Your turn. Have you ever considered time from a different perspective and been surprised at the conclusion? I did a long-range view of the kids’ ages/grades/our ages based on Kelsey’s “The years are short” spreadsheet; a fun glimpse into the future.
PS. If you’re curious, Christmas will also fall on a Sunday in 2039, 2044, and 2050!
Header photo by Jan Romero on Unsplash
I’m feeling the speed of the time through my girls growing, thus I am happy with the shift of focus to them now. they are in the age of big change in 5 or 10 years.
The rapid passing of time definitely stands out in relation to kids growing. Some of the changes happen so quickly and dramatically. Like, one day, Abby will be able to drive?! That seems incomprehensible to me now…
The toddler and young kids age can feel so daunting. Reminders of the years being short is so needed sometimes. We entered the stage of not needing to get a babysitter last year (my oldest is 12) and it has been a huge shift that allows for more ease in the logistics of my day.
Now I could really do without the challenges of middle school and my son finding his way and making friends. This shift was not something I realized would be so challenging.
Those early stages are such a unique part of parenting. I did find that time seemed to “stand still” more back then. But not always in a bad way, either. So many new developments were happening with regard to motor skills and language which seemed to make me more aware of the passage of time. Now it just seems to be speeding – at least at the grand scale. Some days seems to last for an infinite amount of time!
Middle school is HARD. I think this is relatively common, but I was surprised how much of an adjustment it has been.
I definitely feel this, as I was born on Mother’s Day and because of leap year, I think they sync up every 11, 5 or 6 years, which means this year when they do match up again, it will only be the 7th time they have been on the same day (including the date of my birth). So I will let you guess how old I am 🙂 but I am definitely feeling the passage of time! I think its easy to say, “oh that was a year ago” and it is kind of normal, but when it’s a more uneven landmark, it makes you stop and think more.
OH! And PS, I subscribed to follow up comments to my posts but I am not getting them 🙁 so I am still manually coming back to check to see if anyone has responded. Thought you would like to know!
Wow! That’s so interesting to be able to measure birthday’s that way. I know someone who was actually born on a leap year and I remember finding that so cool as a kid, but I suspect it’s a bit of a nuisance in some ways?
Ugh. At this stage, I think I might just remove the reply feature since it’s not working for most people. I CAN get it to work for me when I test it, so I’m not sure what’s going wrong. Sorry people have to keep coming back manually; maybe I’ll circle back around with another plugin down the line.
Hi! Maybe it’s because I am on the blogger/gmail platform? Before you ditch it, maybe you should ask your WP friends as I know noting about that side of things… I am not trying to go all IT tech on you, but when I comment do you get an email sent to you, and if so, can you reply directly to that? I just wonder because I have to put my email address in to comment so it seems like you could just email me back? That is what I do to folks who comment on my site if they put their email in.
This is kind of unrelated but just as frustrating, but my feed delivery system used to show my posts on people’s RSS feeds right away, but right now it is taking like three days! I tried to fix it a couple times but neither fix worked…so now unless you physically go to my site, my news is three days old… you gotta love technology. Or maybe it’s user error…
I can’t get your site to work in my feed, so I always have to click over manually!
I answer all my comments logged into my WP account, so I don’t have to do anything with e-mail addresses.
I logged out and used the comment section as a test and used a unique/old e-mail address of mine, and it worked like a charm. If I responded to that test “comment” the reply came through.
But it’s not working for others. There are lots of different plugin options, so I might pivot and try another one…or abandon the attempt entirely for now. I need to get some website maintenance done at some point and should hire someone to do it, and I’m sure in the right hands, this could get sorted in seconds!
If I e-mailed people back, I would have to go out of my WordPress account to do so!
I know- it seems crazy to think that Abby will ever be 23! But the time will pass. I wonder if, on that Christmas in 2033, you’ll remember to look back at this Christmas. Who knows what your life will be like then! If Abby follows in your footsteps, you could have a grandchild : )
What a great question? Will I remember and compare the juxtaposition of then and now? So much can change in an instant, let alone over a decade. To be honest? It’s a bit terrifying to me!
And being a grandmother by that Christmas seems utterly insane, but would my parents have thought the same thing?!
2033 seems impossibly far away, but I know it will be here in an eyeblink. My kiddo will be 19 and a half and, if she decides to go to college right after high school, will be in her sophomore year. My niece will be in her last year of high school. My parents, God willing, will be in their mid 80s and I will be approaching 52. How will we be spending our days? Where will we all be living? What kinds of things will we be buying one another for Christmas?
I hope we are all still blogging at that point, and that you post a follow-up to this one
Such great questions! Will we still be in this house 11 years from now? What will I be giving as gifts? I suspect a lot fewer Pokemon cards and colouring books? No Whoopie cushions either.
Will we still do an annual treasure hunt for a gift, or will the kids be too old. Will the kids be HOME for Christmas? I missed my first Christmas being with my parents when I was 21 and then again at 22 and 23.
That is crazy to think about! In December 2033, Paul will be almost 16, so close to getting his drivers license! Will will have just turned 13! So we will be in a completely different stage of life, although not as different from Abby going from middle school to potentially post-college? That seems like such a huge difference. I mean, toddler/PK age to teens is big, but they’ll still be under our roof!
Will will be just slightly older than Abby is now. I do wonder how dramatic the “empty nest” will be in 11 years. We do live in a university town so, technically, she could do a degree there if we’re still in the area and be 10 minutes walking distance from campus. SO many unknowns, but I do know things will definitely look different than they do now!
Levi would also be university-age in 11 years, too. Crazy. Just yesterday at church I picked him up during the music part. Won’t be doing that in 11 years, that much I can guarantee 🙂
YES– this is so trippy to think about, especially because my kids are so spread out. If Harry has a kid when he’s 27 like we did, then Minnie will only be 11- not even old enough to babysit. COOPER’S AGE, even. And if I retire as soon as I am eligible for my full pension, she will only be 14. So weird to think about. Or! If we take a family trip to Vegas when our youngest is 21 (which we always talked about doing pore-Minnie), Harry will be 35. Jack will be 33. Coop will 30 (so trippy to think about all by itself), and Dorothy will be 29. WHAT. I WILL BE IN MY MID 60S. THERE WILL BE SPOUSES AND GRANDCHILDREN.
Trippy is right. Speaking of which, that Las Vegas trip sounds so fun!
I sometimes think of time in terms of years of school. As in four years at a time. I’ve been working for my current opera company for almost twenty years, and I think – that’s like going through college (or high school) five times! For some reason, – it’s probably some kind of psychology of temporal thinking and ageing – thinking of something four years away doesn’t seem like a lot, but if I think of it as, “In that time I could have gone through high school!” it seems like a larger amount of time.
I do this too!!!! It feels like such an engrained timeframe.
I have contemplated time from this perspective… most recently, in light of my aunt’s passing, I’ve thinking about how many Chrismases I might have left with my parents and that I really want to go home for Christmas this year. It’s just not the same when you’re not together with family.
It’s definitely crazy to think about.
I really hope you make it back to Germany for Christmas. It is such a special time of year to be with family. The logistics and cost are significant, but those moments really are treasured for a lifetime.
I was so very sorry to read about the passing of your aunt. <3
I haven’t thought that much about how many more Christmases specifically, but I have been thinking a LOT lately about how many more vacations I’ll have with the boys before they are off and on their own! Down to really less than 5 years before Ethan will be in college! Asher has a friend whose brother is in his 1st year of college and already this year, the whole family is going to Florida for spring break, but the brother is doing some kind of trip with all of his friends. 🙁 How sad!! I’m hopeful we will still be able to carve out trips with them- and heck, I’m almost 40 and we still travel with my parents all the time now! But there comes a point when they are likely going to be very busy with their own lives and travel with us just might not happen for a while…. I told my husband I’m not sure I want to do too many more solo trips (just me and him) for a while- not because I don’t want to, but because I want to try to use every opportunity to take trips with the boys while we can! We had kids young, so in theory/ god willing, we will be quite young when both boys are out of the house. So again, in theory we should have time to travel 1:1 then…
Family vacations are another great time “landmark”!
I distinctly remember when my siblings stopped coming to our cottage each summer. I am the baby by a long shot (8 years younger than my brother, and 13 years younger than my oldest sibling). They all eventually got summer jobs and had to stay home to work!
I love that you travel with your parents!! Honestly, it sounds like SO much fun to have the kids travel with us as adults. Maybe even split up some during the day and reconvene in the afternoon to do a joint activity or something? That sort of arrangement seems like it will never happen, but like someone commented, it will be gone in an eyeblink!
There is this fun website where you can check your age on the different planets. And also you can skip ahead and see when your birthday falls on a certain weekday. https://www.craftaliciousme.com/what-made-me-stop-scrolling-lately/ I love plying this game. There is also a website where you can check what date you will retire… But that one is rather sad.
I’ve actually set up a spreadsheet of the kids ages/grades/my age etc for the next 20 years. It’s CRAZY to look at everything in black and white. And in just a few excel cells I can see exactly what stage we’re going to be at in the years to come.