6: It’s beginning to look a lot like (it’s almost) Christmas.
Blogged on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 by Rachael. Filed in Emo.
Bleh.
I can’t quite explain why I am having so much trouble being in the ‘Christmas spirit’ this year. My sister and I were talking about it, and she isn’t in the spirit right now either. The one thing we are doing differently this year, which may possibly explain it, is that we are giving the majority of our Christmas-gift-purchasing money to charity instead. The adults will be getting small inexpensive gifts from us, and the kids will be getting the gifts they normally do - we decided to divert all that money we’d otherwise use to get each other stuff we didn’t really need at all into much more worthy causes.
So is it that we don’t have the Christmas spirit yet because we’re not scrambling around buying gifts? Is it because the list of things we’re going to purchase is much smaller, and we are also not expecting to receive as much ourselves? We aren’t upset at not getting gifts, so that’s certainly not it. It’s actually nice to know that there won’t be as gigantic a pile of STUFF to pack into the trunk and then try to find places for in our homes.
In years past, when I was younger and less able to visualize myself ever earning enough money to take care of my own wants and needs (like new clothes or other trifling sorts of things), I viewed Christmas and birthdays as my one chance to get things that I felt I needed. If I did not get the things I was hoping for, like new jeans or some sweaters or a nice pair of leather boots, then I was monumentally disappointed. Since then I’ve done a lot of growing up, and when I want a sweater or boots or an mp3 player, I save up (if necessary) and I just go and buy it myself. I am no longer dependent on other people to give me what I feel I need, which makes Christmas feel a lot different than it did when I was a kid (and, alas, a young adult).
I’m just ruminating here… just trying to feel out why it is that I don’t feel excited about decorating or shopping or sending out cards or baking gingerbread cookies. Part of it is maybe that I felt that this year in particular, the entire retail industry pushed Christmas at us so far ahead of Thanksgiving - not just in advertising upcoming Christmas-themed sales and putting up decorations, but also in instilling in us far too early a sense of panicked urgency about the whole thing.
There were sales ON THANKSGIVING this year, not just the day after. Now, I know that stores have been staying open on Thanksgiving day for quite a few years now - America is not as anachronistic as it once was, and not every citizen even celebrates Thanksgiving anyway, so what are they supposed to to when the grocery store is closed on a holiday they don’t even acknowledge? - but having special sales on that day isn’t something I remember ever happening before. I think that they crossed a line this year - a personal line, sure, but a line nonetheless. I don’t want to shop at the stores that had snowflakes and lights up weeks before I normally move past fall themes, autumn leaves, and turkey with cranberry sauce. I don’t want to go to the mall that had large and gaudy decorations hanging from the ceiling on the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN.
I feel manipulated. I feel smothered by Christmas, when I want to have it arrive gently, settling around me quietly like flakes of thick snow on a cold evening. I wanted it to occur to me that, now that Thanksgiving was over and December has begun, that maybe it’s time to bring out the strings of colored lights and the kitschy decorations for the tables and bookcases and the top of the piano. I didn’t want it shoved down my throat or being sung at me in false cheeriness out of every commercial on radio or tv.
I almost never want to do what I’m expected to do, unless I can either admit that it was a marvelous idea, or that I may have actually thought about doing it myself anyway. And since Christmas is such a big deal, the biggest holiday we celebrate here in America the Greedy, I feel like there is something horribly, fundamentally wrong with me that I don’t have any ‘Christmas spirit’ yet.
Maybe I’m just wallowing in my own preconceptions and perceived annoyances, but that’s my right, isn’t it? I love Christmas, but I hate what this season has become. It’s leaving a nasty taste in my mouth, when I’d rather be tasting hot chocolate with whipped cream and freshly baked gingerbread men.
Bah humbug.
13 Responses to “6: It’s beginning to look a lot like (it’s almost) Christmas.”
no, sales on thanksgiving day are not new. when i worked at kmart … how many years ago WAS that? four years? five? … anyway. they had them. i worked on a thanksgiving morning and i did not know it would be busy. when i got to the store at 10 minutes or so to 8 (we opened at 8am), i was shocked to see a line, 5 people deep, across the entire front of the store waiting to get in. i wasn’t wearing my vest and when i said, excuse me, i need to get through, i work here, some of them said, “you aren’t wearing your vest, how do WE know that you actually work here?”
once i got in (i worked in layaway) i had to go to the back to punch in, then go to the front to get the money i needed for my register which was in the back of the store. on my way up front to get my money, they opened the doors and - i could NOT get to the front of the store. customers were running through the aisles with shopping carts and it was like a maddened sea of carts. i could have been run down. by the time i got my money and made it to the back, i was equally shocked to find that the night crew had been picking out what they wanted to buy all night and were waiting in a line of 10 to 15 people, for me to open layaway.
and they didn’t schedule anybody else for 2 hours. i spent two hours desperately putting in layaways, all of them which had a 29 inch tv because there was a special on this 29 inch tv and also a dvd player, so everyone had those. i had so many 29 inch tvs back there i couldn’t move, and i was the one slinging them around by myself. i tell you what. that ruined thanksgiving (and the rest of the holiday season) forever. :P
i agree exactly with what you said about wanting christmas to gradually appear like snow falling. i want that too. i remember it being this, ohh, christmas is coming (after thanksgiving was over) happy slow warmth stealing into the house. mom would gradually put out decorations, and we would make cookies, and presents would appear under the tree by ones and twos (after we finally got one a week or two before the big day). now … it’s being shoved at us. i hate that. i can’t enjoy something that’s being pounded into my head for two months or longer.
and it doesn’t help my roommate insisted on decorating the apartment before thanksgiving even happened. now instead of looking at the decorations and thinking, yay christmas, i look at them and think, argh these have been up too long!!
i suppose that’s enough ranting. :P
Dec 7, 2006
But you’re ranting *with* me, which is fine. :)
Dec 7, 2006
I agree with you completely. From high school on, I have had a harder and harder time getting into the “Christmas spirit”.
Our choir director was shoving Christmas music down our throats in September, PLUS performances for local civic groups. One year, I think we had over 30 performances between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
By college time, finals put a cramp in my style as well. I didn’t usually get out from finals until a few days before Christmas, so it was pretty draining.
Marriage? Heh…trying to decide whose relatives to visit was a pain, and your gift-buying increased as well. Not to mention in-laws subtly picking at what you like to do for Christmas.
I finally put the brakes on after I spent a week in December in the hospital with nervous exhaustion. Now it’s a lot lower key at my house.
Dec 7, 2006
Sudiegirl, you are so right that in-laws put a whole new spin on Christmas… I had forgotten about that, really, because I’ve had in-laws for quite a few years now. I forgot what it was like when it was just my own family/cousins/grandparents to think about and try to spend time with and buy thoughtful gifts for.
…Which is not to say that I’m whining about my in-laws.
Dec 7, 2006
I love Christmas, and I’ve been in the spirit of it since the day after Thanksgiving. I think, though, that is because my father banned Christmas when I was just going into the 6th grade (long sad story there), and I started doing Christmas again after I married my hubby in 2003. So I feel like a Christmas “virgin” (no Jesus pun intended there! –with Mary, the Virgin.. LOL). Before I got my raise, the hubby & I were going to exchange just one $20 gift and then get things for the kids, but my new position is allowing us to get each other more things–most of which are recapturing our youth things….. I love it. I love Christmas albeit we are commercial Christmas celebrators…. but, I think it is AWESOME that you are giving to the less fortunate. (We donated some gifts and last years, too-small coats and some hat and gloves and things.) There has to be some sort of balance.
Dec 7, 2006
christmas changed for me the year my mom “needed” help wrapping gifts. you have to understand my mom and her control games. so i helped her with my eyes shut to hold the paper down so she could tape it. as if!
and it spoiled the feel i usually had, after handling each and every one of our few gifts.
then it was renewed when i met ed’s family. to them, christmas was big.
now i don’t really care again.
it follows me every other day of the year.
to me, every day is christmas……and it is not related to the gifts.
:)
Dec 7, 2006
Aww, Sarah. You’re so cute. I’m glad that your little family is able to experience Christmas the way you have longed to. :D
Herself… I’m sorry about that. Childhood stuff does often leave a lingering hurtness, and when it’s about important things like Christmas, that’s really very sad. *hugs*
Dec 8, 2006
We love you bunches too. To me most holidays now are more about time off from work then anything else. That looks kind of sad in print doesn’t it. Oh well.
Dec 8, 2006
Grampal, I don’t think that’s sad at all, lol. Time off from work is always good. :D
Dec 8, 2006
i’ve grown humbuggy for lots of different reasons. 1) christmas not going as it seems it “should”. isn’t christmas supposed to be all cheery and lovely and happy? half the time my family is stressed out like nobody’s business, my sister has a mouth and a half and likes to use it, and i’m running around picking up loose ends. 2) i have seasonal affective disorder. this makes this time of year pretty icky for me, anyway. 3) i always hope for something special to happen. this doesn’t have to be a gift or anything. maybe just a little lovely thing that lets me know i’m loved. unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. like i said, i’m the one picking up all the loose ends. 4) because of all of this, i’m just tired of being disappointed. and now i’ve grown slightly bitter, which i also don’t like.
we portray christmas in the media as this huge, wonderful, magical thing . . . and it’s definitely not that for me. because it doesn’t live up to that image, i tend to despise it a little.
Dec 8, 2006
Krista, wow. Good point. It is rather more than disappointing than it’s portrayed.
Also, isn’t it bothersome that all the commercials entice you to get a little something for yourself as well as for other people? Why? Why do that?!
Dec 8, 2006
i don’t know why they do that.
i love buying things for other people. i love doing things for other people.
isn’t that in the “spirit of the holiday”?
but not only do we need to get people stuff to make them “happy”, we should get *us* more stuff, too, and that will make *us* “happy”!
hmmm sure. stuff=happiness. haven’t seen that one yet!
Dec 8, 2006
I hear you Rachael on lack of Christmas “Spirit” I am totally without it this year and to top it all off, I just found out my biological mother was jewish which means so am I O_O
Talk about being totally confused and having lack of spirit for either holiday……. oy
On that note I just got our tree up I need to go put lights and doodads on it….
Bah
Love you girl
Dec 9, 2006