I've found that Christmas, like most things in life, is what you make it. I did very little for the first couple of Christmases I was here with Mum; partly because it was too much like hard work, and life was tough enough already; partly because they suggest folk with dementia need stability and not too much change.
But good grief, this time of year is miserable enough without adding to it! So I started putting stuff up a couple of years ago... and instantly regretted it, because Mum was determined to turn our decorations into landfill. The tree got moved and messed with, tinsel got shredded (it was everywhere!) and I'd got most of it packed away again by Christmas Day. Ho, ho, ho!
Last year I kept it simpler and less fragile. I brought stuff out slowly and if Mum messed with it, I moved to where she couldn't get easily, or put it away altogether. But she left the tree -- mostly -- alone and I put lights everywhere. I am cursed by a bad habit of going to B&M in betweem Xmas and New Year when what's left of their lights are usually about £1.
The result was a Christmas which -- even when Mum refused to eat Christmas dinner -- felt like Christmas even if I looked like Halloween. And I'll do it all again this year... one sting of (plain white, non-twinkly) lights is out in the garden already, warding off some of the seasonal gloom a few nights a week, and I'll ramp things up as December approaches. No flashing or colours until two weeks before the big day though. A man's got to have standards!
Mum never had much money, but she always used to make wonderful Christmas memories with her carefully collected and preserved tree decs and knack for making things look better than they ought to. I don't share that knack, but the glint of Christmas she saw in our eyes back then is still in my heart somewhere. I owe it to her to keep trying, because if I manage to cheer myself up a little, I'll be a better carer even if she couldn't care less about Christmas any more.
Of course anything could happen between now and then. Plans need to be more flexible and potentially unfulfilled as a political manifesto. But in the party political broadcast for the 'Do they know it's effing Christmas?' Party I will be promising Quality Street green triangles and Santa visits for all... He can bloody well babysit while we all go out to drink advocaat on a park bench and stare at the stars. Or catch rain in our mouths, which is statistically more likely.
The spark of Christmas is alive in all of us. You just have to give yourself permission to let it catch light. Just don't burn the house down with too many Christmas lights. Even if you only decorate a Christmas cupboard that you can open up and briefly bask in melancholic memories, do it.