Tomorrow is July 25! Only 153 more shopping days until Christmas! Somebody shoot me!

The BBQ Pit
1

I have this persistent fantasy that I live in a world where we do not celebrate Christmas with the mass production, purchase, and consumption of toys. A world without Toys R Us, without Kay-Bee Toys, without (please God) Wal-Mart or K-Mart toy departments.

Every year we have the same conversation.
Me: “What do you want for Christmas?”
Kid: “[list of impossible-to-obtain-or-afford toys].”
Me: “Umm… We’ll see.”

Then every year on Christmas Day we have the conversation that goes like this:
Kid: “I’m bored.”
Me: “Play with your new toy.”
Kid: [pick one] “It’s dumb/it’s boring/it’s broken.”

Please God, let aliens from outer space conquer us sometime between now and December 25 and declare a Death Ray-enforced ban on all purchases of toys specifically as Christmas presents.

2

Shoot you? O.K. Bang Bang! :D:D

As for the rest of your post, been there, done that. I’m kind of glad that my kids are grown up now. It’s especially bad when you have a boy and twin girls. They always fought over what each other got until it got broken, THEN they got bored.

As for the alien thing, I’m not quite ready to be conquered just yet, unless it’s by an absolutley gorgeous female.
Maybe I’ll get one of those for Christmas. :D:D Ya, in my dreams.

3

It’s interesting:
my brother’s still young enough to ask for all sorts of big things–he got a computer last year. All I asked my mother for was a $20 tote-bag for my fencing foil, and a ride back to college. It’s kind of a weird situation, since I can plainly see that a CPU is gratuitous, but he’s just not quite old enough…

4

last year I gave the kids (13-15-17) the option, Do you want something of value equal to $200-250, or would you like a cruise to the Bahamas in early Jan. We really enjoyed the cruise, they had something to remember, and I spent about the same amount. On Christmas day, we just exchanged small gifts, ( like new baggies, or snorkel gear ) and visited relatives. A lot less stressfull, and my wife and I really enjoyed the break, the boat has so much you hardly see the kids! I think I’ll do a ski trip this year.

later, Tom

5

I’m finally old enough that I get all kinds of practical stuff for Christmas…this year it’s going to be a sofa for my new apartment. Last year it was a new computer and an easy chair.

However, WTF is up with grandparents not listening to me on what I want??? They ask if I’d rather have money or a present. I say money, because then I can either a) save it up for grad school or b) use it to buy stuff I need, like the aforementioned sofa. However, they refuse to believe this! And then end up buying clothes I’ll NEVER wear. sigh Maybe this year they’ll learn.

6

Like you, DDG, we recoiled at the excess, both the waste of money and of time, and the disappointment/let down. On the other hand, we also liked opening presents and the festiveness of it all.

About 15 years ago, we took control of our celebration. Here’s how our customized fix works: Each person gets one “real” gift (gameboy, new outfit, toaster, whatever), which they participate in choosing. We wrap it up, but it’s not really a surprise.

All the rest, the surprises, have to be practical. By practical we mean “things we are always running out of.” Zip loc bags, light bulbs, batteries, scouring pads, paper towels, bandaids, vacuum cleaner bags, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower scrubbies, canned olives, pop tarts. It’s all very silly and very fun. Especially if everyone enters into the spirit of the thing:

*Oh, Mom, you shouldn’t have!!! Not AA batteries for me!!! How did you know. Oh honey, and they’re 100 watt bulbs too, real GE Soft-White ones. Baby! A six-pack of Miller Genuine Draft, how did you know? *

The pile of presents looks great. We only spend money we were going to spend anyway. We have a great time coming up with fun, practical stuff. And, besides, it’s an excuse to buy the cool designer Star Wars bandaids and try 5 different brands of paper towels. Christmas afternoon can be spent by industrious 8 year olds in determining (through diligent use of colored water) whether Bounty really is the quicker picker upper. I’ll picker-upper you if that red food coloring gets on the carpet. Oh, mom, it’ll wash out.

Try it, you’ll like it. (By the way, my kids are now 23, 14 and 9. The oldest one participated in the “transition,” the younger two think this is “normal.”)

Oh, and since this is the pit, I HATE IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

7

[chandler] Your Christmas makes me sad. [/chandler]

8

KAPOW!!! (one of my favorite gun noises)

I try to ensure that I buy a Christmas present for my SO as close to the 25th of Dec. as is humanly possible! The best I have managed is 11:50PM on the 24th!! (one of her favorite presents too I might add!!)

Usually my presents suck! (see my technique above to see if you can figure out why) but sometimes I get it right.

9

Scrooges, all of you.

Practical Christmas gifts, where the heck is the fun in that. Christmas is the one time of year I really enjoy overspending on all of my friends and family, the rest of the year I’m ch . . . spending impaired.

I love Christmas, I love wrapping presents for my mom, dad, 2 brothers, 1 sister, and other assorted friends and family. I like going to the stores, even if it’s crowded, and wandering around trying to pick out just the right gift. (Wussed out last year and bought my mom a new Kenwood Stereo system, she liked it but it wasn’t really ‘special’.)

I actually played Christmas music at 12:00 AM, um at this point, yesterday morning drawing groans from both of my unsuspecting roommates.

And I love ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

10

I love that, as_u_wish! Funny! Also, glad to know I am not the only cold heartless bastard who hates It’s a Wonderful Life.

I’d really, really like to get my family to make the transition from presents to travel. My sister’s kids, due to divorce and other family arrangements, end up getting FOUR Christmas celebrations. My kid doesn’t need anything. We also end up spending good $$ shipping all our presents back home…I find myself submitting a gift list to my family that is edited for WEIGHT, for christ’s sakes. I nearly killed my sister when she gave me a HUGE candle last year.

I actually think they’ll go for it. We have to travel anyway, to be with them. My sister, the one who gets the most loot since her kids are at loot age, already hinted at the idea. And my parents have always said travel is the thing to spend money on–it’s what leaves you with the best memories.

Oh shit, am I thinking out loud again? Sorry folks.

And Goose, if you hadn’t already admitted it, I’d say the mention of holiday shopping before December 15th would be a dead giveaway as to your gender.

11

Don’t even mention this accursed Holiday. I refuse to particpate in the lemming like urge to pad some greedy corporations bottom line. My relatives are lucky if they get ONE thing from me. I hate most christmas music, and the only holiday special I tolerate is Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special. Scrooge is my hero, tho a little extreme.

12

What, you Cranky Old sexist pig :wink: , dads aren’t allowed to shop before December 15?! Shame on you! (Actually, go look in MPSIMS, I already Confessed All this morning.)

I do enjoy the shopping, partly, but I also dread it. And I do enjoy watching the kids open their presents. It’s just that they’re so hard to shop for, especially now that they’re growing up and are getting past the automatic “anything with Barbie/dinosaurs/X-men” on it stage. What do you get the junior in high school who already has a hair dryer/cordless shaver/wristwatch/contact lenses, etc.? Who has plenty of babysitting money to buy her own CDs? And whose taste in clothing is so totally different from your own that you haven’t dared to try to pick out clothes for her in years?

Yeah, yeah, I know–give money. But that’s just so tacky, somehow. You’re supposed to give a present that’s carefully chosen just for that one individual. That’s where the challenge lies. I get it right about one Christmas out of three.

A couple of years ago I read a book called The Battle for Christmas, which was a very good history of our current Christmas traditions, which made me feel a little bit better about getting stuck on the shopping hamster wheel.

It’s all Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s fault. If Queen Victoria had married someone else, say somebody from Norway or Spain, we wouldn’t have to go out and buy boxes of colored aluminum foil strips made out of bauxite from some Third World nation being stripped of its resources by unscrupulous First World capitalists, to hang on a spruce tree grown in Michigan for the last 10 years by some poor sap of a tree farmer hoping to get rich, and trucked down here using up valuable petroleum resources, just so we can put it out on the front porch on January 2 and spend the next 6 weeks reminding each other to “put that out for the trash man”. Blame it all on Vicky and Al.

13

Ready… Steady… Aim… Can’t do it! Too cute! Can’t pull trigger! Oh well, I really didn’t want to shoot you anyway. How 'bout if I just wing you?
Wanna hear something even more revolting? Valentine’s day has never been a traditional holiday in Japan, it’s pretty much a Western thing. But starting about a decade ago, the diamond dealers got together and funded a big ad blitz there to popularize the notion. It took, and being Japanese they went hog wild with it. I understand that it is now a brand new tradition for a Japanese man to buy his sweetie a sparkly new diamond each and every year at Valentine’s day. And not some little dandruff flake either, it’s gotta hurt.

How fucked up is that? 150-odd million new slaves for the diamond industry! And they didn’t even have an existing custom to hang it from either. It was just straight from Madison Ave with no lube. How could they fall for such a load of horseshit? And I thought they were such clever little devils!
Back to the OP, I’m already in training. Being male, I can’t allow myself to take the easy way out and shop early. Instead I have to train with weights, aerobics, punching bags, driving my fingertips into buckets of gravel, that sort of thing. With luck and dedication I might be almost a match for the little old ladies and their umbrellas at the bargain rack on Christmas Eve. Of course, I’m still in physical therapy for the injuries I sustained last Christmas Eve, so that slows me up a bit. No worries, I shall persist.

The only cloud on my horizon is Christmas music. Last year I held strong all the way through the season. From Thanksgiving through the end of the year, pathetic schmaltzy Christmas music every goddam place you go. I finally broke under the punishment though, when I was cornered in an elevator by a cotton candy rendition of Silent Night done with muted duelling lead guitars fronting a full string orchestra. The store manager found me huddled in the corner chewing on the shattered remains of the little elevator speaker. Who knew those things were so expensive? But this year I’m ready for them. I’m having custom fit ear plugs made. 50 dBA sound level reduction, with top quality Sony ear buds built right in. I’ll hum along to NIN and Tool as I wreak mayhem at the 30% off rack. Wish me luck.

14

My grandmother, God love her, had this interesting rule for gifts. Clothes for your birthday, toys for Hanukkah. There were three of us grandkids roughly in the same age group, so it made shopping a lot easier for the three of us.

Then, when I got to be school aged, the whole concept seemed a little silly. My birthday falls at the end of June, while Hanukkah is sometime in November/December. It seemed pointless to get summer clothes I could wear for three months, while I was busy with school and had no time for toys. She agreed. Now that I’m older, I get money or jewelry. (usually money, since my cousin Audrey retired from the jewelry wholesale business.) I’m perfectly happy with that. This year, I used her birthday money to pay for part of my vacation. Last year, I used it on a new Crock Pot.

Robin