Y'all, I can't believe Thanksgiving is one week away. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? I feel like this year, more than any other year before, totally flew by at rocket speed. Thanksgiving? Gah!
Thanksgiving has actually become my favorite holiday, trumping Christmas for sure. I love the laid-back feel, the home cookin', the Macy's parade followed by the dog show, the wine and conversation with friends and family. It's also ended up that Jay and I have never travelled for Thanksgiving since moving in together. That all changes this year, though, as we're headed to St. Louis and beyond to spend the holiday with my grandparents. Should be a lot of fun - plentiful food, cousins, aunts, uncles and babies to enjoy. And my parents and brother will be there, too - only thing missing will be my sister. Waah!
There's really only one thing squashing my Thanksgiving cheer, and that's CHRISTMAS. Good LORD, Christmas is stomping on Turkey Day! I know that it's been the case for a long time now, but every year I get crankier about it. Between the commercialism and consumerism and the in-store promos starting in October and the street decorations coming out the first week of November, I'm turning greener by the minute!
A few years ago, Jay and I started slowly scaling back the Christmas shopping in an effort to combat the consumer-related cranks we felt creeping over us. We started making more gifts, and each year have gotten more adept at thinking outside the box, coming up with nifty things to make OR, if it's storebought, choosing things that are really special, whether that means locally made or something the recipient REALLY wants. Don't get me wrong - I love to gift people. I just hate the pressure/stress/cost of doing it in a 4-week window every year, and I hate the way the gifts become so repetitive. As my friend Marianne says, what's the point of exchanging gift cards with someone? You could just take that $25 you spent on the gift card for Aunt Marge and use it to buy your own whatever at Amazon, and vice versa. Does my dad REALLY need another red tie? (He might say yes). Whatever. The point is, we've become a lot more jolly as we've eliminated a lot of the stress, repetition and overspending from the process, and that's been really great. But the Christmas season is still cranky-making for me, and I have been trying to tune out the Christmas songs I heard in Claire's today, and the snowflakes decorating the streets on Capitol Hill round about, oh, November 5th.
This year, we decided to add a new twist to help us beat the grouchies. In the past, we've still purchased gifts for each other and exchanged them, even while scaling back. This year has been very productive and successful for us, and we're feeling pretty good about things. We were chatting and we sort of realized, there's really not much that we want or need in the way of gifts. And sure, we could go out and get each other some things - new knitting needles, a sweater, whatever - but meh. No need. SO - we decided to buy some household toys that we'll both use and enjoy in the coming year, rather than gifting each other. I'm pretty freaking excited about it, too. Sure, this means we're spending MORE money on each other than normal, but we'll both reap the benefits of the fun toys we picked (an iPad and an Xbox - boo-yah!) for much longer than that new sweater.
SO. Once again, I am combatting the Christmas Cranks - this time by rewarding myself with fancy toys for me, treating my friends and family to really special and well-thought out local and hand-made gifts they couldn't buy for themselves, and above all else, not celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah or ANYTHING but turkey until AFTER THE TURKEY IS CARVED.
How about you? What are your holiday annoyances?
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