There is part of you that wants it all just to go away. The sheer amount of work and money to put on the Christmas holiday is nothing short of titanic. You don't want to even add up the costs and the only thing you know about the work is that there simply is not enough time to get it all in. Getting the tree and decorating are just the starting gun for the Christmas Olympics that starts Thanksgiving weekend and doesn't officially end until the New Year. And like Chevy Chase at the end of National Lampoons Christmas movie, all you can mutter at the end is, I did it.
And yes kids up the work load. There are the mountain of presents that have to be bought. And these are not cheap gifts. You are talking high tech presents with hefty price tags. IPODS, phones, notebooks, IPADS, laptops, speakers, televisions, plasmas. Yeah ok. This might be a little over the top but not much. Throw in the XBOX's and video games and GPS and the Kindle Fire and you might as well file for bankruptcy now. Underwear and sweaters have been replaced by 4G Smart phones. The low tech Christmas simply doesn't exist anymore.
And then you have the activities. Seeing Santa. Seeing the lights. The windows, the stores, going to the parties, throwing the parties, entertaining extended family and not so extended family. Talking to the friend brought by the friend who ends up at your kitchen table because he or shes parents are in Aruba. The long lost relative who drops in and then disappears for another ten years.
But really it is time that is in shortest supply. That the money runs out is a given. What you don't have enough of is time to get it all in so the Xmas cards take a hit with seeing A Christmas Carol or going caroling or making cookies or putting up those extra lights on that one pine tree that you always said you would decorate stupidly five years ago.
Because then it just ends and you are taking down the tree and stowing the boxes and facing the long slog toward spring with a few memories and fewer dollars, as the countdown begins to the next Christmas Olympics.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
And yes kids up the work load. There are the mountain of presents that have to be bought. And these are not cheap gifts. You are talking high tech presents with hefty price tags. IPODS, phones, notebooks, IPADS, laptops, speakers, televisions, plasmas. Yeah ok. This might be a little over the top but not much. Throw in the XBOX's and video games and GPS and the Kindle Fire and you might as well file for bankruptcy now. Underwear and sweaters have been replaced by 4G Smart phones. The low tech Christmas simply doesn't exist anymore.
And then you have the activities. Seeing Santa. Seeing the lights. The windows, the stores, going to the parties, throwing the parties, entertaining extended family and not so extended family. Talking to the friend brought by the friend who ends up at your kitchen table because he or shes parents are in Aruba. The long lost relative who drops in and then disappears for another ten years.
But really it is time that is in shortest supply. That the money runs out is a given. What you don't have enough of is time to get it all in so the Xmas cards take a hit with seeing A Christmas Carol or going caroling or making cookies or putting up those extra lights on that one pine tree that you always said you would decorate stupidly five years ago.
Because then it just ends and you are taking down the tree and stowing the boxes and facing the long slog toward spring with a few memories and fewer dollars, as the countdown begins to the next Christmas Olympics.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
