I was about to title this post “Holidays Suck”, but then I thought “Bah Humbug” was a tad more creative. The truth is I love the holidays. I love Thanksgiving, and I love Christmas. However the older August gets the more I feel Bah Humbug”-ish about it all.
We had a great Thanksgiving, despite some disagreements with my family, and now Christmas is amongst us. My family is actually Jewish, but the confusing thing is we celebrated Christmas growing up. Although we celebrated Hanukkah every year, those gifts were pencils, crayons, erasers, etc and for Christmas we got the cool stuff like bikes, doll houses and matchbox cars (my sister’s fav, as I remember).
My parents chose at some point after we went off to college, I can’t quite remember when, to not celebrate anymore and now the whole thing is incredibly uncomfortable. First of all, I married a guy who’s family does celebrate Christmas (and by celebrate I mean you can’t see the Christmas tree because it’s so stuffed with gifts) and I like to celebrate it as well. I love Christmas trees, hot chocolate, peppermint sticks, hot apple cider, wrapping gifts, and most of all I love giving gifts. Or at least I usually do. But this year I’m finding it all exhausting. Here are my thoughts thus far about the holiday:
“Do I give my parents a Hanukkah present, or not?”
“I don’t want August to think Christmas is all about receiving gifts. I like him getting gifts, but I wish it would be no more than five or six in total.”
“If everyone else is giving August a present, obviously we should too. But what? Or maybe we shouldn’t get him anything.”
“What do I get Brent? Oh shit, I never even got him anything last year. Maybe I’ll give him two rain checks.”
And it goes on, and on….not to mention that my husband’s family is coming for nine days starting on the 26th. August and I (okay, fine…), I mean I’m used to us having our nice quiet days. We have breakfast by 9am, then we go for a run (on the good days), we go to the playground, the store, or story time, we’re home in time for lunch at 11:30 and nap by 12:30pm. If all goes well, he sleeps for two hours, and then we do something active and hopefully social in the afternoon, followed by dinner around 5:30pm and we wait for Brent to come home. I tend to have a hard time with outsiders disrupting our schedule, not to mention feeling judged by that schedule (whether they do or don’t is irrelevant).
I think I care too much about what other people think of me (even if you can’t tell by my posts, it’s true!), so when I get wind of other people sharing in our lives for a few days (much less NINE days), I get a little nervous.
Anyhoo, as I said, “Bah Humbug”.
Tags: Bah Humbug, Christmas, in-laws, presents, rain check, toddler schedules
