Bah Humbug!

I hate Christmas. Not the holy day itself or the event we remember, but the whole "thing" that this "season" has become in our society. The commercialism and drive to buy, buy, buy more and more material goods is over-whelming. Maybe I'm feeling it more because I'm over-whelmed by the amount of material goods in my house as it is. Santa could skip us and we would still have plenty to play with. I'm having a hard time not just canceling Christmas this year.

But the kids need to have some kind of good memories of the holiday, I think. When you hear about the childhood traumas most people remember from their childhood, many of them hinge on how the holidays were treated. And the Deac has always loved this holiday. Last weekend, though, I fear I robbed him of the Christmas spirit completely by taking one look at his Christmas wishlist and then showing him our credit card statements. That probably wasn't cool.

When we first got married, I remember being completely gung-ho about this holiday. We made much less money than we make now and we spent more on Christmas presents for family and friends. Each year I took great pride in decorating packages nicely and shipping them out on time to reach their intended recipients before the holiday. This year, it's December 20th and I still haven't made a list of what I want to give people. I hate the forced giving - that's part of it. I wish I would just buy gifts throughout the year when I see them and send them to friends and family right then. Actually, if I could be organized enough to just buy the gifts throughout the year and not save all the shopping for December I'd be guaranteed to feel less overwhelmed by it all.

This year our normal "schedule" for how Christmas works is completely messed up since Christmas falls on a Sunday. Normally we go to liturgy at midnight on Christmas Eve and come home to a little yummy snack to break the fast while the Deac and I play Santa. Then we toddle off to bed around 3 am and wake up leisurely late in the morning, have bagels and coffee, and spend the day opening gifts. Then we make a lovely big Christmas dinner (prime rib is a favorite) later in the day. This year we're actually talking about just getting cold cuts for sandwiches when we come home from church on Sunday (and just *when* is Santa supposed to come?). Hey, at least that's frugal, right? Why spend more money splurging on a big roast that you're just going to excrete in 12 hours?

Sigh. It'll be over in less than a week and that's good. Then we can set about enjoying the rest of the days in the holiday. It's really just the first one that I hate.