Tarnished Season

So it's Christmastime again....I am really not a fan of the holiday season. Don't get me wrong I love to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ BUT I am pretty sure that me becoming an unbearable shrew is not how Christ would prefer me celebrating His birthday.
I suppose that I just really hate the stress and expectation that comes with the period from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Now that I am an adult I really understand why we NEVER went anywhere for Thanksgiving or Christmas or inflicted/enjoyed a huge family holiday.
Let us analyze this for a second. First we have Thanksgiving. An excuse to add a vomitorium off the back porch as we begin the season of no self-control. We eat and cook and cook and eat. And even if we do not intentionally pursue the holiday pastime of vomiting someone will begin and then it spreads like wildfire. And if by some chance you miss this bullet at Thanksgiving it will certainly hit you at Christmas.
Then as soon as the meal is over and the leftovers put away for a few hours before someone needs a snack, out come the Christmas decorations....WHY? Well because if you don't get it done now it will NEVER get done.

So now comes the fun of putting up lights and reminiscing over all of the cute ornaments from years past, right? Well sorta. I mean lets get real I will never have a Hallmark tree. You know the one that looks perfect and balanced and just, Ahhhh. I mean until this year everything nice was precariously piled at the top of the tree while the lovely satin balls that become unravelled at the slightest glance graced the bottom 2/3 of the tree. Sadly even though I knew better than to tempt fate I did and several lovely glass ornaments have been - well obliterated!
Now that the tree is up someone- me and my sister since hubby is never home and is in school- has to do the obligatory hanging of lights in the yard and off of the house. (Seriously who thought that this was a good idea. I mean this is not something they did with candles and lanterns pre-Electricity, did they?) AS you learn new methods of self-torture like wondering how many outlets you can plug together or if you are wearing the appropriate foot attire to not slip of the roof- nearly did this one- you feel a sense of accomplishment. My house looks good....Until the neighbors turn on their light show and you realize that they must make gobs more money than you thought because your electric bill will be high BUT their's will certainly be higher. DRAT!


Now if you are slightly insane/brave/overachieving then you shop on BLACK Friday. You go through every ad to see what "deals" are out there and what applies to your kids. Now you've made a budget and you are going to stick to it this year, right? But then you circle this and look at that and then you realize that as Dudley Dursley taught us From Harry Potter that it doesn't matter how big they are but how many. Therefore if you have four gifts for one then there must be four for ALL. It doesn't matter that one gift for one was nearly twice that of the remaining gifts, numbers count.

So now you consider your Christmas card selection. Now if you were on top of it you took a family portrait prior to there only being 6 hours of daylight and you can insert this into a lovely pre-designed card and be halfway there. If not get ready for a great case of carpul-tunnel. So you then have to find your holy grail, you know the ADDRESS BOOK. This small piece of arcane technology causes you more headaches and ulcers at Christmas than at any other time of year. You rarely ever use it but it is essential to your ability to fully include all of those friends and long lost family members that will certainly be peeved that you forgot them or sometimes grateful beyond words. AS you rack your brain as to where it is you decide to make an educated guess as to the number of cards to order to fully suffice but not exceed your needs. Who wants an extra 20-25 cards lying around? Not me! And then hallelujah you find the book!!! Good thing you ordered those 100 cards from COSTCO- despite the lack of faith in that number that your husband expressed. Now just pray that all of your addresses in your aforementioned ADDRESS BOOK are correct.


Now the meal. First you must consider the number of people attending your meal an whether they are adults or children- this year we will have 17 people for dinner; 13 adults and four children. You must consider likes, dislikes, traditions, cost,etc. And you are still not guaranteed that the soon to be three year old will eat anything other than candy canes.


Well, finally the day comes. The morning breaks and mom rolls out of bed and makes breakfast. We try to hold back the tide of ancy kiddos and have some spiritual focus before the ripping of paper and watching of Christmas movies. And that's when it happens...yep the stress diminishes for just a minute like blowing on a piece of silver and rubbing the tarnish off. There it is a glimpse- even if just for a minute- of ...oh what is that word...JOY. You no longer care that you have spent too much, stressed too much, ate too much and will be eating more. All that you know is that you are with those you love and that maybe Christmas really isn't that bad.