Here are a few things I've learned about the Christmas season that I'm putting down in writing (typing), so my addled brain will remember it next year.
1. Budgeting for Christmas presents for your kids and spouse isn't enough. You've got to add a bunch more for neighbor gifts, school treats, concerts, work parties and activities so your kids and neighbors don't get the shaft. I may not be doing neighbor gifts this year. Sorry friends.
2. Letters to Santa should be written before all the toys sell out.
3. DO NOT GO TO WALMART.
4. Although homemade gifts may be from the heart, they also take a long time and usually cost more than a gift the person you made it for actually wants for Christmas. And if you decide that making gifts, making cards, making homemade neighbor gifts, and making tags is a good idea in one season, you're wrong. It won't all get done, and then everyone gets a lame gift with their name written in sharpie on the package. Homemade is okay, just not everything at once. Which is, again, why neighbor gifts may not happen this year. There just isn't enough time to bake something for the whole neighborhood.
5. Don't wait to mail the 10 different packages you have until the week before Christmas. The line at the post office starts half an hour before they even open, and if you're there with 2 kids, you find that even 5 minutes is too long to be there. This is why some of my dear family isn't getting their gifts until Valentine's Day. Sorry.
6. Plan ahead. I have a very long list of things to get done before Christmas, and it's hanging over me like a guillotine. If you're stuck with a million different projects the week before Christmas, it takes the whole true meaning out of Christmas for you. All you feel is stress and anxiety and annoyance, when you should be feeling peace and goodwill toward men. I'll tell you, there wasn't a lot of goodwill going around in the toy section at Walmart 2 nights ago. This should be a time where you are seeking opportunities to serve, spending happy and loving time with your family, and celebrating the birth of Christ, not frantically searching for that one last gift your 4-year-old has to have.
7. Have fun! Enjoy the holiday lights and listen to some Christmas music. If you're missing the joy of Christmas, plug in your lights on your tree and keep them on all day. It does the trick around our house. Read the Christmas story. Just don't stress and worry and turn into a Grinch (now I'm talking to myself here). Merry Christmas!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
8. Drink eggnog. Lots and lots of eggnog.
The Wal-mart across the street from me had a rumble the day after Thanksgiving. Cops were called and the store was evacuated. I can't even look in the parking lot when I drive by it without breaking in to anxiety hives.
Jenny 37 weeks pregnant over Christmas = no teacher gifts, no neighbor gifts, no niece and nephew gifts and for crying out loud no homemade gifts. It's about as bare bones as it gets this year and you know what? I'm totally okay with it and enjoying the season just fine. I'll make up for it a different year.
Aren't you glad it wasn't the Vicksburg Wal-Mart? Shudder.
AMEN!
Although, in Walmarts defense...or not...I finally found the one gift that I couldn't get, (because I mistakenly passed it up twice at the end of November, silly me thinking they would still have one of the 50 they had in stock later), at the THIRD Walmart that I checked (That doesn't include the 8 other stores I physically checked and the many online stores that were selling the same thing regular $38 for $85.)
Yeah for lots of Walmart's within a 30 minute drive.
I still have yet to mail my 5 packages!
I completely agree, especially with #3. I have only been in Wal-Mart twice in the past two years. Both times I am reminded of why I never go there. I am a Target girl through and through.
I vowed to give mostly homemade Christmas gifts this year. I was pretty successful, for the most part, but I also started in August. Which you cover in #6. It is absolutely essential to plan ahead.
I hope you get everything done that is essential. Don't sweat the rest and enjoy time with your kids. Have a Merry Christmas Rach!
amen to the homemade gifts! It is so expensive to make things nowadays, its better to just buy something and save the money, time, and trouble. I've done absolutely nothing for Christmas this year. We are moving so that involves a totally different to-do list poised over your neck like a guillotine! Its mere millimeters from my neck...millimeters!!!!
Two words: on. line.
Gas costs so much that even if you do have to pay shipping it is still cheaper than running around.
And why do we women torture ourselves with neighbor gifts? Have you ever thought to yourself, "The so-and-sos didn't get us anything this year, I guess they hate us." NO! Neighbor gifts are fun to get, but no one remembers who does and who doesn't. I'm not doing it either this year, and maybe never again . . .
I refuse to go to Wal-Mart (a.k.a. the Evil Empire) 365 days of the week. I hate that place. I'm pretty sure everyone comes out of it with an odor, a headache, and a temporary hatred for mankind.
P.S. You can print off labels online for your packages and save yourself ten thousand years in line at the post office (which also keeps you from losing an extra year off of your life). I think you pay through PayPal or something. Michael and Holly do this all the time.
Post a Comment