Dear reader, I am going to apologize in advance for this post. It is going to seem terribly un-Christmasy, unholy, dispirited, and rude.
I am sick of Christmas as it is celebrated today. For an entire month, I watched people run around like crazy ants trying to get all the presents they could (and couldn’t) afford for friends and family. They had to wrap them all. They had to mail some of them, deliver others. They had all kinds of holiday baking to do. Parties and get-togethers with their various social clubs – the children’s holiday party, the garden club, wine club, you name it – all of them have their own little party and all of them need each person to bring both a gift for the exchange and home-baked goodies for everyone to gorge on. Christmas cards must be written. Decorations must go up. Then just before the day of, everyone travels to go see family, or works hard to get the house looking spotless and themselves looking fabulous after a train wreck of a month that requires so much out of us all.
And on the day of, exhausted and bloated people watch as all those gifts are unwrapped with zeal by children who, by and large, already have a roomful of “stuff” that they have no room for, and who don’t understand the effort or appreciate another Barbie or stuffed animal – they keep unwrapping, a sort of glazed-over expression in their eyes after the third present, in the hope that the next one is the Big Thing that they wanted. Barely a thank-you passes their lips as they take off to play with the one item that worked for them.
The adults, maybe having a few morning mimosas to help them cope with the chaos, exchange pleasantries as they swap gifts – rarely, again, anything that they actually NEEDED. The practice of re-gifting exists for a reason, many of us already have too much stuff. Throughout the year, we help ourselves to whatever we perceive we lack in our homes and wardrobes – the gifts we get, typically, are not things we would have gotten ourselves, but out of guilt they will hang around our homes for dusting, or some of us will re-gift them, taking care that the re-gifted item waits a few years and goes to unrelated persons.
Have I summed up my reasons for the dislike of the season yet?
Let me now say, I truly love the idea of the holidays. I love the decorations and the idea of holiday cheer. I love that so many religions celebrate something around the same time year and that there should be a reason for celebration as the days of winter keep getting shorter and colder. It gives us something to look forward to, in theory, to help us get through half the winter with anticipation. We can get through the other half of winter anticipating the arrival of Spring. Not so bad a deal, really.
The problem is that the good cheer doesn’t exist. That the holiday centers around all this commercialism. I find myself short on sleep, harried, stressed and even grumpy throughout the month. I’m a busy person to start with, like much of the rest of the world, and throwing in all of this on top of what is my busiest business month of the year is nothing more than madness.
And so, I’ve pondered how we can make the holidays less stressful, more joyful.
The answer is only to pare down. If all of our associations and meetings didn’t have to have a holiday-centered party, it would help, wouldn’t it? If we didn’t have to buy so many presents and stretch our budgets so terribly, it would help, wouldn’t it? If we didn’t have to sit down and write a hundred holiday cards, it would help too, right?
Pardon me for seeming cheap, but I made most of our presents this year (and last year). I’ve decided that’s what the holidays were originally – you made presents. There were not piles of them unless you were wealthy. Which, we are not, and neither are most of our family and friends. Making presents takes time, more than shopping does – unless we plan ahead a little. I was able to pad presents with homemade jams and apple butter, which appears to be appreciated. If I make presents now for next year, before the weather warms and draws me outside, then I have that much stress out of the way. If I plan ahead and make extra blueberry jam for everyone, then I’m ahead. If I plant extra herbs to make herb sachets for my friends that like to cook, then all I have to do is dry them and I am ahead there too.
Gift wrap also bothers me. It costs money, it kills trees and it winds up in a landfill in massive quantities every year. I tend to like bags, which get reused every year. I like baskets, which people tend to keep or re-gift, with everything out in the open. My mother spent a lot of time one year cutting fabric in various widths to use for our family wrapping instead – absolutely brilliant. We use this fabric year after year, and it just feels special. Newspaper can even be dressed up with good ribbon – and I’ve re-used ribbon for years.
Holiday cards? I’m sending out new year’s cards this year. Knock that off the December list, and let me feel more hopeful about the coming year now that I can focus on it and not the festivities at hand. Or, just send e-cards – no extra killed trees, no postage, no guilt from the gas the postal vehicles use (if you’ve thought that far – I was just trying to survive December, everything else is an afterthought).
This of course leaves all the holiday decorating and baking and parties – but aren’t these the best parts of the season? Maybe if more people were able to start in on the holidays earlier, then more of that wonderful holiday cheer would spread and the holidays may be that much more joyful in the coming years.
Here’s to hope, and next year…