Bah Humbug

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. I’ve always loved Christmas. Decorating the tree, wandering through the stores to find the perfect presents for family and friends, attempting to wrap said presents … and then looking at the distorted blob that is supposed to hold joy and happiness, and deciding that my mother would do a much better job of wrapping them, and passing the buck to her … really, I love Christmas. I loved pretending to be sleeping soundly on the couch, so that I could listen to my mother and sister tinkering around the house, preparing it for Christmas morning.
Which brings me to another point: yes, I do believe in Santa. I don’t believe that Santa is a fat man in a red suit, full of magic and candy, who commands a sleigh of flying reindeer … no. If I believed that some magical stranger came into my house once a year while I was sleeping, I would be a neurotic mess. Santa Claus - to me - isn’t some mystical being … Santa Claus is my mom, who goes out of her way every single year to make Christmas happen, and be wonderful for the kids. Santa Claus is my mom, who always buys an extra present for everyone who will be in the house Christmas morning - whether they live there or not - and writes “From Santa” on the gift tag. Santa is the person who loves you enough to make Christmas magical, even for an anger-ridden Atheist who’s not exactly a joy to be around at family gatherings.
So, now that we’ve gotten the “Santa” thing out of the way, let’s get back to it: I really do love Christmas. In theory. Unfortunately, packing so much joy and fricken happiness into 1-3 days of cleaning, cooking, unwrapping of presents, playing with presents, reminiscing over dinner, cleaning - AGAIN - and finally saying farewell, is just beyond frustrating. Take today, for example: I picked everything up off the floor, vacuumed, scrubbed and double-scrubbed the floors. And then what happened? I spilled my pop, and the kids peed on the floor. Both of them. I’m still on the fence over whether it was intentional or not.
So, after all the cleaning, planning, shopping, wrapping, and preparing … comes the waiting. Sure, Christmas Eve is - as I’m typing this - 57 minutes away. But, with only half the family coming at 7:00 AM (assuming they’re not late) Christmas morning, and the other half coming Boxing Day, the wait continues.
And with the wait, comes short tempers. Like the peeing on the floor, and the vanishing gift tags - so that more had to be downloaded and printed off - and the Christmas presents that still need to be BUILT!, and other Christmas presents that are still “in-transit”, and baking that doesn’t work because the yeast is no good, and children who don’t listen, and puppies who act as though they’ve just scarfed down a stash of Ritalin …
But, that’s just the last 10 hours of stress.
The biggest one for me, right now, is not being able to buy presents for my niece and nephew. Why? Because it would be impolite to other family members, who maybe can’t afford to buy everyone presents. And since I’m not the “Grandma”, I don’t have that right … yeah, that bugs me more than a little.
Yes, in a perfect world, Christmas isn’t about presents. But, when I only get to see them every few months, if I'm lucky, then I kinda want to get them something to commemorate the event. I’m sure that they will grow sick of the presents eventually, but hey, that’s what donations are for. Personally, I still have all of my Christmas presents. I’m materialistic … sue me. I like receiving and giving presents … sue me. I’m a fairly easy person to shop for: buy me a $5.00 movie out of the 2 for 10 bin at Walmart, or a nice, big Word-Search book, and I’m happy. Am I going to spend $50.00 on every present for every single person in my family? No. But once upon a time, everyone got, or even MADE, something for everyone in their family - who was coming for Christmas. Some people can’t afford to do that … fine. They don’t have to. I simply don’t agree with not buying something for someone, just because someone else can’t.
But, whatever … Christmas is a happy time.
So, moving on from that … it’s now 45 minutes from Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting here imagining all the things that will go wrong tomorrow: Josh’s mouth, of course, and possibly some lewd behavior; kids having temper tantrums because they can’t open the obscene amount of presents that their bio-parents sent them; not having the right ingredients for Christmas dinner(s), and having to find a store that still has those ingredients; and/or, as happened last year: Josh opening all of his presents early, because he wanted to make sure that he got more cool stuff that his siblings. Oh, joy.
Then, Christmas morning? Well, I’ll say one good thing: I won’t have to deal with my eldest brother’s morning bitchiness at being woken up at the time that he was told we were getting up, seeing as he won’t be here Christmas Eve … he’ll finally get the chance to wake everyone else up, assuming he actually gets here on time. That’s debatable. But, whatever … I could rant for hours about the many things that certain people do that annoy me, but people tend to get finicky over what is said over the internet. Go figure. ‘Cause you know how the entire world is reading this blog, and knows personally myself, and everyone in my family, and will surely spread that gossip with every single person that they meet, so that when they see said family member on the street, they’ll point and scream: “oh my god, you did this and that! What a terrible person!” … Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
I have a pretty simple philosophy when it comes to rants: If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
I seem to be getting off-track. Though, really, it was related - this stress came from mine and my mother’s birthday, which is less than a week before Christmas … it relates. Apparently our birthdays shouldn’t have been about US, but rather accommodating everyone else. Who knew?
What was that about Christmas being a happy time for families to come together, and enjoy the pleasure of each other's - excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth.
Anywhoo … Christmas: not something that should be shoved into one big family reunion. Space it out. Make it a longer break, so that families can actually be together, without the stress of clumping it into a few hours in a day. ‘Cause you know what happens then? People get bitchy, other people get accusatory, and then the people who’ve been slaving to make everything perfect - or just HAPPEN - get pissed off that their efforts are not being recognized.
I have no trouble understanding why suicide rates, accidents, and domestic disturbance calls drastically increase during Christmas. Happy time of year, my ass.
Call me selfish if you will, but a happy Christmas, for me, is waking everyone up, passing out presents, watching everyone see what I bought them, seeing what everyone bought me, helping my dog open his Christmas present - and counting how long it takes him to devour it - checking out the goodies in my stocking, taking pictures, and then playing with/watching/reading my presents while we make breakfast. After that, everything else pretty much sucks.