Bah, humbug!
Fairly well in the spirit, yes. Especially considering I had surgery a couple weeks ago that left me with an open wound the size of my thumb, I got a virus last weekend that landed me in the ER getting fluids, and now I have a cold. We got the tree up and a few of the other decorations out before my surgery, most of the presents we’re doing this year are already wrapped, and the stockings are hung by the dining room hearth. The Christmas Friend gifts and the stuff for the foster kids’ party are delivered. I found most of my Christmas music CDs. Yesterday afternoon I piled up on the couch with a plate of bourbon balls, my antlers and wrapping supplies, and a stack of Christmas movies and specials. I’m pondering making a buche de noel for tomorrow’s gifts and dinner with the in-laws.
Yeah, I think I’m rating pretty damn high on the pro-rated jolly scale.
No
I hate this time of year.
My MIL stopped putting up a tree when my SILs decided to take turns hosting festivities. She said there was no use for it not just because of her age, but also because “the kids aren’t going to be here, and frankly, Christmas is for them, not for their parents.”
We do a goofy white elephant with SO’s family on Christmas Eve and a goofy $20 Yankee Swap with my extended family on Christmas Day plus a maximum $50 Secret Santa (we pull the names on Thanksgiving). SO and I wait until after New Year’s to exchange presents or we save up for a vacation or something.
I fractured my wrist and spent all of November in a cast up to my elbow. Nevertheless I somehow managed to make a few things for Thanksgiving. The cast is off now, but for some odd reason I’m really not looking forward to making anything for Christmas like I usually do. I was also mostly housebound. I think it messed me up in some way 
{QUOTE]*A menorah is any candle holder. The special one you use on Channukah is called a channukiah.
[/QUOTE]
I never knew that!
‘Menorah’ is so sexist!
I think they should be called ‘person auras’!
Many years ago, when I was still in grad school, one of my jobs (besides my library internship) was in a Hallmark store. This meant that I worked about three Christmas seasons. At the height of the Beanie Baby craze. (And I do mean craze. We had to keep them behind the counter on a glass shelf and customers would let us know which ones they wanted. Otherwise, God knows what kind of mayhem would have gone down.)
I’ve always said that if my Christmas spirit can survive that, it can survive ANYTHING. 
Been a little rushed in past years, though, with caregiving duties for my mother, and this year it seems to be flying by awfully quickly without much time to feel the spirit, but I’ve fit in a few things like seeing the tree in Princeton’s Palmer Square, going to Winterthur with my friend and her family, and viewing the gingerbread house competition in Peddler’s Village. (Which featured not one but TWO Tardises this year.) It’s those small, personal traditions that put me in the mood.
Very much so. I’ve been singing carols almost every day for a fortnight. And this morning was the fourth Sunday of Advent, with its air of expectancy.
And all the external signs are there:
- the school year has ended for the summer holidays and there are children everywhere;
- the city is chaotic with shoppers;
- there are endless Christmas functions at work;
- it’s light until after 8.00pm as we approach the summer solstice, and the evenings are getting warmer and more humid;
- my gardenias are flowering like mad.
I am! I always get a late start because we wait for my Christmas tips to roll in before we start buying. But this year, my income is way down (tips are fine, but needed to catch up on bills), so we’re doing a much simpler Christmas: chai mix for the grownups, maybe a few felted potholders (okay, I only have one made thus far), some party mix. I’m taking my whole immediate family (kids, partners, grandkids) to see a local production of Shrek the Musical. Beyond that, small gifts for the grown kids and a bit more for my teens still at home. We haven’t gotten a tree because my teens just calculated that a tree equals about 2 pizzas and they’re still making a judgment call on that one.
A good friend of mine just died, and I keep thinking of her teenage children and how glad they would be to just have a chance to hang out as a family. So that’s what we’re concentrating on this year. Thank you, my beautiful Jill, for reminding us what’s really important.
No, no, no. Not at all. No decorations, didn’t send any cards. got a total of 1 gift, sent out a half dozen or so.
The most special thing about Christmas to me is getting a day off work. To sit home alone with my dogs.
Bah humbug indeed.
Yeah.
I do about 20 mins worth of decorating inside the house. Just a tiny tree (that I leave the decorations on!) and a couple things out on the display shelf. Last year I bought some outdoor lights at 70% off so this year I put them up.
Every year for the past 20 years I go and play at Tuba Christmas in Akron. And my friends and I get together to make gingerbread houses (out of graham crackers). Oh, I also send out cards.
We’ve started a new family tradition of going to the “Slovak Christmas Eve Dinner” at an abbey in Cleveland, whenever it is in December.
So basically every weekend since Thanksgiving I’ve been doing Christmas shit. Which I think is cool because it is just coming in digestable little events, which require little of me but to have a good time! (Ok not the lights, but they do look great)
We don’t exchange gifts and my mom doesn’t make a big deal out of decorating her house. She didn’t have me over to bake cookies, she just did them in her spare time. We don’t even have any plans to meet with any family, not even my nieces. We’re just going to chill at mom’s house (me and my dogs) and see what happens next.
It sure can be stressful, this time of year. But if you can get away with doing whatever you truly enjoy/feel like doing - it’s nice. And festive.
Bah, humbug. The only thing I like about The Christmas Season is that since everyone can get off work often provides an opportunity for the entire family to assemble at once. I’m not flying all the way from Australia to the US and back for it, though.
So I’m just stewing in my hatred of Christmas carols and gaping in awe of how unbelievably lazy this country is - apparently, it’s not uncommon for Australian business to just shut down for a couple weeks from just before Christmas until after New Year’s (because fuck you hourly employees!). I mean, the entire department at work is shut down entirely from the 23rd until the 5th. Literally, no one is coming in other than one guy to click a couple buttons that need to be clicked on one particular day. Apparently, this isn’t strange in the least here. People just don’t work between Christmas and New Year’s. I walked past four or five cafes today that are just doing no business until January.
I am in semi-Christmas Spirit mode I guess.
I don’t have a tree with a bunch of packages under it, but my “Xmas Stuff” bins are sitting open on the living room floor. So far I have a couple of strings of lights lit up and various holiday gewgaws on display.
I saw four yard-decoration Bumbles on my walk today, which boosted my Christmas Spirit at least a notch or two.
After several years of depression and not bothering with Christmas, I’m actually getting into the spirit this year. Nothing big, but I got presents for my wife’s grandchildren, I put a few decorations on the table and I’m enjoying the beauty of our fat red Christmas candles that had been languishing in the attic. I actually got some Christmas cards sent out this year- almost unheard of for me. It IS beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 
Living in Taiwan, Christmas isn’t that big of a deal. We do some for the kids, but the culture is the culture.
I’m down now, I’ve started therapy again and it brings out the demons, so coping becomes the major goal.
The Christmas spirit is dead in me. I’ve run totally out of givashit. I don’t think even being visited by Scrooge’s three spirits could turn me around.
I haven’t been in the Christmas spirit in at least 25 years.
I like Christmas. I like it more than when I was a kid. I like picking out gifts. I like the time off work. I like visiting family to a certain extent, but I know exactly what that extent is and plan accordingly. If there were any aspects I found stressful, I’d just stop doing them.
The odd thing is that there seems to virtually no adults that I know that claim to actually like Christmas, but when I say (every year), that I’m not interested in celebrating my birthday, I come off as a grump, and know one seems to believe me.
It’s not that I want be a a grump. I’m in retail, and most years, as Annie-Xmas said upthread, you can take all that spirit and shove it up your ass. That’s what retail does to one’s mindset this time of year. I don’t like being a grump. I’d LIKE to be able get into the spirit, maybe have a little tree, stockings, nothing all-out big, just a little something.
I’m going to midnight Mass on Christmas eve after going to my SIL’s. Haven’t done that in years. Maybe that will help.
The logistical difficulty when you can’t stand without crutches and you can’t carry anything because crutches take both hands, is considerable. However I’m going to pull myself together and make some preserves with some of the rhubarb and strawberries I found in my freezer (vacuum sealed, so its fine). Its only 2 ingredients and everything’s already chopped. People are usually enthusiastic about my preserves so that will be nice.
To be clear, its not wrong to call it a menorah. That’s just the more general term. “Channukah menorah” is also correct.