Welcome to Noelle.

I’m so happy you’re here. In some ways, Noelle has been a lifetime in the making. I’d love to tell you what Noelle is all about and who I am.

What is Noelle?

My name is Shannon Christmas. Noelle is the name of my company covering a few areas: Maryland-based family and commercial photography, small batch and custom art prints, and a blog.

Tell me more.

I grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts and am currently living in the Annapolis, Maryland area. I married my soul mate Tommy in 2018 and we have two toddlers and two dogs.

I studied Finance and International Business in college and spent my career working in the field. While I loved many aspects of my career, I always felt a pull elsewhere. More on that later.

When I had my daughter, my heart knew right where it both needed and wanted to be: with her. I spent a few years slowly drawing back from a full-time career in finance & analytics, moving to part time. I had my son and finally came to a full stop (with a wonderful company) at the end of 2024.

Being a mom has been pure magic for me. It’s hard to find words to explain what it feels like to know and love someone so fully and wholly since before they were even born. To be with them every day, teach them, learn from them, and watch them grow fills me with such immense gratitude and happiness.

We are deeply enjoying this phase of life in which our kids are toddlers: we can live slowly, smell all of the roses, play with no agenda, and simply be us. We feel very grateful that I was able to step back from my career to make room for this.

Despite the analytical nature of my studies and career, I have been a lover of creating things since childhood. I always felt a pull to do something more creative and felt that something was missing from my career. I filled that creative void in various ways throughout my school days and career: publishing stories online, creating a food blog, doing custom art for family and friends, making the most (sometimes unnecessarily) beautiful spreadsheets and data visualizations at work, taking photos of family and friends. At one point I even randomly started making wreaths in our Boston apartment. You never know when inspiration will strike.

Creative pursuits are always calling to me, and while I would occasionally dip my toe in the waters of one of these fields, I never jumped all the way in. In hindsight, I think this may have been because I feared the cost and effort it would take to jump fully into one area—choosing only photography, for example—and I worried that once I had made the sacrifices and effort to get there, I might realize I made the wrong choice.

Fast forward to the present. It dawned on me—ironically or maybe with a sprinkle of Christmas magic—during the beginning of the 2025 holiday season (which begins on November 1st for us) that I don’t necessarily have to choose. I can keep doing exactly what I already love doing on the side for fun, but make it more formal under an official business. It was truly one of those moments where something dawns on you and seems like the most obvious, beautiful path forward, a path you have been wandering toward your whole life but the way forward only just became illuminated.

My goals for Noelle in the beginning are to continue to learn, grow, and create. Accept that it might happen slowly, but to enjoy the process, give myself grace, but also challenge myself to go further and see what might happen.

Thanks for coming along.

Why Noelle?

Growing up and to this day, I absolutely love everything about the Christmas season. The decorations, the stories, the music, that magical glowing feeling, cozy nights by the fire, searching for the perfect gift, the scents. I could go on and on. Christmas was imbued in my soul long before I met my soul mate and married into the last name Christmas. Fate?

Before I met my husband, I always wanted a daughter named Noelle. For obvious reasons, this cannot happen. Noelle Christmas? Nope. Maybe a dog someday, I thought.

When I had my big breakthrough realization to start an official company, the name was obvious. It had been waiting to be a part of my life on the sidelines until now.

If I can’t have a daughter named Noelle, I realized, I can certainly have a company named Noelle. And here we are.

Why is the website called www.ruenoelle.com?

Simple answer? I knew my company name was going to be Noelle. However, the domain “www.noelle.com” was already in use (hello salon in Connecticut! love your name!) Even “www.noellellc.com” was taken.

I played around with different options for what seemed like ages. Studio Noelle? Noelle Atelier? Nothing felt right (or was available…), especially since what I am creating is a mish mosh of things, instead of one streamlined service like photography.

Then it hit me. Rue Noelle. “Rue” means “street” in French, so, Christmas Street. A picturesque Main Street for my company—sweet little shops lined up next to one another, each with different wares but all under the same family, all on the same street. For me that’s photography, art, a blog, and whatever else is to come.

Rue Noelle doesn’t precisely translate to Christmas Street in French. The French word for Christmas is Noël, and if we’re going to be even more accurate, I believe French streets might more commonly begin with “Rue de” (Street of) instead of just “Rue”. So, “Rue de Noël” might therefore be the most accurate translation of Christmas Street*.

Then I realized—Rue Noelle feels right, and that’s enough. There’s a lot of room in life for over-thinking something, and this doesn’t have to be one of them.

Will it be the right name forever? Maybe not. Is it unfortunate that my iPhone autocorrected ruenoelle to rubella the first time that I typed it out? Yes.

For now, Rue Noelle it is. I purchased the domain for ruenoelle.com and haven’t looked back.

*Last thing to point out here, I promise. I do love to be thorough. While “Rue de” might be the more common start of a street name in France, exceptions are made for names. Since my last name is, in fact, Christmas, Rue Noelle might be almost accurate in the end.