This year, I decided to get gifts for only three people in my life. Most of my Yule activities have involved dinner with friends, etc.
No trips to the mall. No tree. No decorations. Just spending time with friends. As it should be. And that’s made it my best Christmas yet. 
Why does it take a holiday to make people think about good will to men, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor…and then we go back to our greedy little ways again by Jan 1st? People are in need of people 24/7/365!
Christmas is cool but New Year’s Day blows chunks.
Ya know what I hate about Christmas?
It’s like my parents went Christmas shopping and just as they were getting ready to leave they suddenly remembered “Hey. Theresa has two kids, right?”
They spoil Shannara shamelessly and always have. They never forget her birthday and send her something that usually involves gifts and cash for Christmas. My brother has three sons, two of them are his wife’s from a previous marriage. They don’t forget them.
My mother has remembered Josh’s birthday ONCE in nine years. ONCE. And he notices too. Their gift for him this year was lame to begin with and then they stuck a twenty in there with it. How nice. But Shannara got more than one gift and 50.00 bucks. I can’t even let them open their gifts at the same time anymore. I gave Shannara her’s when Josh was at school last week. It’s not like I can afford to go get more for Josh to even things out either.
As much as my mom bitched when she felt my grandmother slighted one of my brothers even a little bit, I cannot believe she does this.
Well I certainly second the desire for this whole “season” to be over. I am stuck working everyday this week. I cannot go home and see my family. All of my friends are out of town. I will spend Christmas Day as I did the Eve . . . working alone, then going home to watch videos and perhaps engage in a beer or two. I am old enough where I know I have to do what I have to do to survive and that means taking whatever hours my boss throws at me. (I also get to work New Years Eve til midnight and New Years Day.) I miss my family and I just hate the feeling of being lonely at a time of year when (most) everyone else is getting to be with loved ones.
Now compound all that with the fact that the job I am stuck doing . . . is running non-stop Holiday music for a radio station.
Hey buddy can you spare some anti-depressants ??
I hate the same damned songs, sang the same way by the same people, played endlessly in public places. The only time I escaped “Have your self…” and “Rudolpf the…” was when I was in Ecuador. Instead of then, everyone was busy with the festival of Quito and the Corrida – Bullfights beat Frosty ANy day.
I had the PERVERSION of the holiday. Your worth as a person is how much you spend on people who don’t need it in the first place (kids excepted).
If anonimous charitable donations were the rule and seasonable music was banned, I would have MUCH happier Decembers. \
Or maybe it’s my sucky family life, or the fact that I’m not a (little c) christian. I was raised in a christian household, but, man, what keeps the non-environmental-christians from going postal.
Whew. Thanks for that – I feel better.
I hate the fact that this year Christmas is on a Wednesday and I have to go back to work tomorrow.
Having your liver torn out daily by a giant bird is what you make of it.
I prefer to enjoy it.
Wow. xiao_wenti sums up my feelings exactly. One thing I don’t get about Christmas music that I hear these days is that it sounds like it all from exactly the same era. I might be wrong, of course, but if I’m not, then WTF is it with all Christmas songs being thin-blooded 50s lounge swill? How many freakin “Jingle Bell Jazz” ripoffs can there be?
OKAY! WE GET THE CLEVER JOKE NOW. You’ve combined traditional Christmas lyrics with that brand-new music style called “jazz” you heard on a “race record”. Brilliant. You’re EXTREMELY CLEVER AND ORIGINAL. As modern as a JET PLANE (those are them newfangled ones without propellers). There. I said it. I presume you’re happy; now quit with the goddam “Juhjuhjuhjingle belllllls” before I lose my butter-cookies.
I did defeat the spend-a-lot-or-it-doesn’t-mean-anything demon this Christmas. I got my little neice and nephew a pair of soft stuffed animals that cost $3.25 apiece! I couldn’t resist them - a sheep and a cow. Not just because they were cheap, but because they were very cute and my n & n don’t have many stuffed animals (lots of toys but few of the teddy bear / ragdoll type).
So my nephew said, after he had opened two presents (one from his dad and mine, “I got two presents, a squirt gun and a 'ittle cow named Cow”. [Boris heart goes pitter-patter.]
Other than that Christmas bit. My liver is scheduled to grow back in mid-December, 2003.
What’s an example? You mean stuff that a person already has around the house, right? Because if you have to buy things to create the presents, it’s the same deal.
I have thought about putting together baskets of some sort but it still costs money, and I’m horribly uncreative with that sort of thing. I have no artistic skill whatsoever. I’m safer buying pre-made gifts if the cost is comparable.
The thing I like least about Christmas is duty gifts. I think you should give people gifts because you genuinely like them and want to make them happy. Barring that, you should at least put some effort into making the gift you bought due to your feelings of moral obligation a gift that the recipient might actually enjoy. That’s what I do. There are people on my holiday list who I do not really feel very close to, but when I get them gifts I put some thought into it and try to select something that I think that they, personally, will like.
If other people are not willing to put that sort of consideration (and I do mean consideration, not expense) into their selection of gifts for me, I’d prefer that they not give me anything at all. Honestly. Send a card if you like, but if the thought behind your gift is obviously “I care nothing about your personal tastes or interests, so I have purchased this bland yet almost comically inappropriate gift merely to fulfill my sense of duty” then I’d rather you kept that thought to yourself.
Fiancee and her entire family, it seems, were raised on the same Christmas collection. It is at least 50 years old and somehow found its way to CD. She must just tune it out (except she listens to it) because after an hour I was ready to use The Force to knock out the CD player.
I am managing, this year, to buy most of my gifts after Christmas. This is because I’ll be going up to see my family in a few days and didn’t mail anything ahead of time. I am hoping to see some slightly-marked-down prices. And I am fairly sure I will find what I want to find.
I already know what I want for Christmas next year, and I think the only thing seasonally-related that is sadder is that I already know I won’t get it.
Blargh. Thank Jebus Christmas is only … two and a half months out of the year (songs, decorations, shops saying "COME BUY CHRISTMAS GIFTS! NOW!)…
Well, not really. For my parents this year, I bought a $13.00 frame from Target, the kind with lots of little windows for different pics. Then I went through all their photos, and picked out all the ones I could find of the two of them together, then arranged the best ones in semi-chronological order, starting with a pre-wedding photo and ending with a great one of the two of them sitting together on a porch holding hands.
They loved it, and I created my gift for the both of them for a grand total of $13.00, with no creative effort needed. It’s quite possible to come up with meaningful gifts with little cash outlay.
Well, I hate to intrude on this party of vitriol, but I’ve had a very nice Christmas so far. I’ll adress some points in order:
(a) Overcommercialization. First of all, well, duh! This has been ranted about for as long as I can remember. Last I heard, no one was holding a gun to your head and forcing you to decorate anything, buy anything Christmasy, or in any way buy into the meta-Christmas experience. I did much of my shopping online, the rest in one quick trip to the Stanford Shopping Centre, and I believe I got through the whole season without once hearing Frosty the Snowman or anything of its ilk.
(b) Family/loneliness. I’m very lucky to have parents to whom I’m very close, in whose lovely breakfast room I’m typing even as we speak. So I’m really the wrong person to try to sympathize. Perhaps next year instead of, or in addition to, SDMB Secret Santas we can have SDMB Secret Friends/Confidantes.
© Gift giving: The only person to whom I give gifts out of a feeling of obligation, even arguably, is my grandmother. And if I can spend $50 and make an 89-year-old widow truly happy, it’s money well spent. Of course, I say that as someone who can spare $50, and who doesn’t have in-laws.
What’s my overall point? Sure there are powerful forces out there trying to get you to spend money, decorate crap, etc. But they are easily resisted. Holidays are really about you and those you care about. Nothing can take that away from you.
Merry Christmas everyone, from the bottom of my half-Jewish agnostic heart!