Merry Christmas and all that stuff....

Our Christmas weekend has been fairly eventful thanks to a wedding on Saturday night. Early in the evening I realized that I was going to be our designated driver. My husband started pounding Manhattans like they were going out of style. He attempted to dip one of the bridesmaids. At least she landed on top of him when they hit the ground. He doesn't get that sloshed too often so I don't mind having to pour him into bed and stuff Advil down his throat. Lord knows he's taken care of me when the tables have been turned. It was nice to have something like a wedding to break up the holidays. Took my mind off my unfinished shopping and lack of gift giving ideas.

I started thinking about how much cooler Christmas was when I was younger. People say it's sort of fun again once you have kids. My cousin's wife came to dinner tonight and said to me, "don't do it". I knew exactly what she was talking about. She probably had spent all day trying to get kids, who were all cracked out on Christmas cookies and soda, into nice clothes to shuttle them from house to house visiting family. Watching kids around Santa reminds you a bit of watching junkies. The crazed eyes and jerky movements, they could be easily confused with meth heads.

You try to recall that feeling you had. I remember, but it's impossible to recreate those feelings again.

We watched a Christmas Story about 10,592 times. That movie never gets old. "What does mommy's little piggy do?" Then there's the onslaught of claymation. That stuff is cool. You knew it was getting close to presents from the fat man when the Rudolph claymation came on.

I was always totally psyched by all the Christmas decorations in the house. In my 6 year old brain it was a winter wonderland. I used to love driving around looking at all the houses with lights. (This was pre-lazy man decorating. You couldn't just plug in a giant snow globe and call your house decorated. It involved ladders and lights and at least a few close brushes with death to make your house look good.)

That feeling you would get on Christmas eve, there's nothing like it - all you wanted to do was fall asleep so you could wake up but you were so hopped up on Christmas cookies and soda that falling asleep seemed impossible. The best was sneaking downstairs in the morning to check out the tree just to make sure you actually got gifts. The best gift ever was the Barbie Dream House. It was fully assembled under the tree that morning, I don't think I was ever so excited.

Then there was the post present opening delirium. You couldn't even decide what to play with first. So we would just sit there and organize the loot in a futile attempt to make sense of the mess.

When I got older it was a nice time to see all my friends. When we were in college we would all meet on Christmas eve at my friend's house to help her mom wrap presents. She would bribe us with bottles of champagne and we would hang out for hours.

These days there doesn't seem to be much to say about the holidays. They're a bit of a pain in the rear. Sure it's nice to see friends and family. It's great to have a week off work. But shopping for gifts is tough when everyone in our family is at the point where no one needs anything. I boycotted shopping at the mall a few years ago after an unfortunate incident over a parking space. I took my business online. This has been pretty successful but I got lazy this year and waited too long. Perhaps that's why I'm such a Grinch this year, I spent time in the mall yesterday. It was horrifying. This year my sister and I (and respective spouses) decided that we weren't going to exchange gifts but instead come up with an activity the four of us could do together. The only catch, it has to be something that costs less than $30 per person. Sure, there are plenty of things you can do for $30 bucks but there is some creative competition here so you can't just get movie tickets and call it a day. I won't talk about our gift yet on the off chance that they read this before tomorrow morning.

My mother, the church lady, would argue that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our Lord, but from where I stand it seems more about eating cookies and tolerating your neighbor's bad taste in lawn ornamentation. This is why I'm a huge fan of Thanksgiving. It's a no-strings-attached holiday - eat some turkey, hang out, fall asleep, life is good. Christmas seems too high stress with little reward. Perhaps that will be my excuse to have a few kids, so I can enjoy the fun Christmas stuff again. Do you think they'll be damaged goods when they realize I gave birth so I could watch Charlie Brown's Christmas again?

I leave you with the Mommom quote of the day...

Dad: Mom, I'm going to paint that cane for you.
(Perhaps you recall my earlier post about the sawed off snow shovel with a rubber stopper on the end that she's using as a cane these days?)
Mommom: No you will not, it's fine the way it is. It's nice now and if you paint it I can't take it to a restaurant anymore.
(Yes, I frequently see people trolling around the Max & Erma's with a sawed off shovel...makes perfect sense.)