01/14/2026
My Renovated Holiday
Several years ago, I developed a practice of taking the week of Thanksgiving and the week+ around Christmas and New Year’s as a holiday. I closed the office and made a vacay of those weeks. I wish I could say this was 100% born out of a love for the holidays, deep traditions and family connectivity, extensive travel, or merely claiming time out from the demands of my design work and construction. The truth is, around Turkey Day, Jesus’s bellybutton day, and New Year’s, the work weeks are hijacked. The most terrific teams are feeling the tricks of the season. Fabulous finds have delayed deliveries. Best-laid project management plans burn to the ground. This may be true for many industries, but this is the one I know best.
As a second-generation preacher’s kid, I grew up without the thought that this was the most wonderful time of the year. I hardly remember feeling the magic of Christmas or Santa Claus. There was nothing precious for me around the time that folks started prepping for the birth of Jesus. I remember the myriad of parties my parents wanted and/or needed to attend, and a few that we too were expected to dress-out for. I remember the increased calls from demanding church ladies who had their knickers in a wad about flowers and power and this and that at the church, the landline ringing regularly with Deck the Halls calls from a parishioner who was bedside with a dying loved one jingling all the way to meet their maker, the frequency of people young and old who understood ‘Tis-the-Season-to-OD, and the member who stood on the front porch of the Rectory, not with yet another Happy Holiday fruitcake for the fam, but with her Season’s Greetings handgun. Oh, and it would not be a holiday without the heated hustle to spend time with our extended families here and there about South Carolina and the show we were quietly trained to execute. This time of year has always been tricky. All was not calm and bright.
A handful of years into the now two+ decades I’ve spent working in the design and construction industry, I quit fighting what happens to folks during this time of year. Whether working as a designer, contractor, investor in residential property, or working with home and business owners on the building or renovation of their property, this is a hard time of year to do our best work. If I had my druthers, I’d wrap up the year’s work by mid-November and close shop, so to speak, from Thanksgiving through the second week of January. Instead of participating in the annual charade, I’d call it what it is and opt out.
Regardless of which week the third Thursday falls, there is a month of to-dos on the list for the three work days before Thanksgiving. After folks break for four or five days, we begin “The December Drift”—the inability to be truly project-focused is real on both the client and workfolk side. Tradespersons get called to urgent service calls from long-standing clients with real or perceived wounds that must be healed before they host their company holiday party. Many folks travel, and knowing who’s on the pitch and who's on the bench in the beautiful game of construction is all but impossible. Manufacturers and vendors work limited hours; there is a “Festive Freeze” when supply chains suffer from weak links and predictable disconnect. The voice of the tradesperson on the other end of the phone becomes a bit beat down, and the faces of my construction colleagues sport a haggard holiday haze.
It had been 26 months since I took a “holiday,” a vacation, a break. Some might say, once and only once if I am in earshot, that I had had some time away over the last two years. We shall not count the time I stepped away from work in Q1 of ‘24 for significant spinal surgery or the time in Q3 that Hurricane Helene wreaked historic havoc on my community, my home, my third child—SH2H—our clients, trades, suppliers, employees, and owners alike. I hardly remember last year’s holiday season. All of 2024 was a real (poop-emoji) storm, and the reconstruction, both personal and professional, of 2025 was quite the undertaking. I have taken a day or two here or there over the last two years, but I have not, and dare say I could not, have taken a real holiday.
At the end of 2025, I was finally able to take a week of vacay, time away from my work at Sally House to Home and the required repairs and renovations to my home, time out of the temporary housing. This Thanksgiving, I flew myself up from down south and my son (23) across the country to join my daughter (25) in Burlington, Vermont. This was the first time our little fam has gathered since before Hurricane Helene.
I rented a little Airbnb half a mile down the road from my daughter and her partner’s apartment. Like most things online—sweaters said to both feel good and somehow be flattering, imagery of takeout food, and photos of single men my age on dating sites—the rental looked better on my device than in person. (No wonder they photographed the bathroom with the shower curtain pulled closed.) Like much of the housing in “Burly,” it was tired and weathered, in need of some TLC. But the location was within walking distance to the 20-something kiddos' apartment, and the beds had good sheets and slept well. We were all about connection, not destination. The better part of a week was spent merely hanging out, doing very little, eating and drinking better quality and quantity than we usually do. We played a couple of games, watched a few shows, walked a bit, and we talked a lot. It was a simple, sweet time, and, thanks be to Mother God, it lacked drama.
Upon my return to Asheville and the little rental house I have called home for the last year+, I knew I would have to put my head down and work through the “DecemBetween.” If I am to finish my own reconstruction and renovation, I will need to take whatever meds are required to stay the course at House of Sally. We have several lovely designs and hearty construction projects that require my attention, as well as two new design projects I am thrilled to pour myself into for early 2026 construction. I spent Christmas day in loungewear that reflected I am far from being an influencer. I enjoyed the day and celebrated quietly in my very empty borrowed nest.
This year, surely, safe and securely settled back into my own abode, barring hurricanes in the mountains (fingers and toes crossed), I’m returning to the practice of closing shop the week of Thanksgiving and the two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s. Leaning into the industry’s “Great Slowdown,” avoiding the cluster-you-know-yuck, and reclaiming the time away that justifies the grind and fuels my creative spirit.
I am now tucked in my sweet office in Asheville’s River Arts District in what is the second work week of this new year. Feeling grateful for the journey that brought me here - and quietly hopeful, maybe a touch excited, about what 2026 holds for both my work and my life. ~ Sally
