Christmas...in July

I woke up at 4:30 this morning from a nightmare. Well, I considered it a nightmare, anyway. I was dreaming that it was Christmas Eve and we were leaving for my parents' house, but I had forgotten to get them any gifts. Not so much forgotten, but just ran out of time. I was hysterical because I was unprepared and didn't know what to do.

Christmas was my favorite time of the year when I was young...what child didn't like Christmas?? However, as I've gotten older, I dislike it more and more each year.

We put too much pressure on ourselves to get through the holiday season. First, I feel like I need to find the perfect Christmas cards to send out, and enclose the perfect holiday greeting letter. If we're hosting a holiday gathering, I have to serve the perfect meal, and the house has to look perfect, including all of our perfect decorations, and especially our perfect Christmas tree. The outside has to be lit up absolutely perfectly because people drive by and look at those things and make comments. Of course we can't forget having the perfect assortment of Christmas cookies, each and every one baked to perfection.

Of course there is also the matter of finding the perfect gift for each person, in the perfect size and/or color, and then wrapping the gift perfectly. Did I get the right thing? Did I find the right size box for it? Did I wrap it so that it looks pretty?

And all of this is going on while I'm working full time, trying to stay on top of things at my job.

IT'S NOT WORTH THE PRESSURE!!

I would love to boycott Christmas some year. No cards, no baking, no gifts, no gatherings. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Sigh....not gonna happen.

Instead I'll just keep trying to come up with ways to beat the system. Hahahaha...yeah, right, like THAT'S gonna happen.

Every time we go down to the basement, and go into "the concrete room" (the storage area) and we see all the Christmas decorations that I've gathered throughout the years, Ted and the boys cringe, and Ted feels obligated to say something along the lines of, "What are we going to DO with all this stuff??" or "We're not going to bring ONE more Christmas item into this house!" or "There's that tree you bought, that I have NO idea what you're going to do with."

(Okay, so my weakness was Christmas trees. I probably have about 12 trees but only a couple of them have ever been put up. I always have big plans, but run out of time. Maybe some day.)

Some year I would just like to enjoy the season...watch holiday specials on TV, attend some holiday concerts, go out and see everyone else's lights, things like that.

BAH HUMBUG!!

Guess I better start thinking about my holiday lists, sigh.