Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Christmas Gripes

Since I don't see a thread here for airing all our complaints about Christmas (and you know we all have them ), I thought I'd start one.

Anyway, I recently heard a song that sums up my thoughts on Christmas quite nicely.

The 12 Pains of Christmas

Oh, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, you should still feel free to join in - in particular if you want to gripe about your own holidays or the time of year or even the lack of parking spaces due to all those inconciderate people who do celebrate Christmas

Anyway, have at it. Get all your frustrations out here before they boil over and you suddenly finding yourself pulling the beard out of poor old St. Nick during your next trip to a shopping mall.

ML

Too much to do with so little time. I had to buy presents to ship out. Now I have to buy presents for those that are local. Plus bake cookies for my work's bring-goodies party, bake mini-pigs-in-a-blanket for the husband's pot luck party, try to make Santa hats for my slippers for my work party (both mine and hubby's parties are on Wednesday!), make christmas cookies for the family. And I completely forgot that I meant to spend this morning at the DMV, so I have to do that Friday morning instead of having a nice leisurely sleep on my birthday!

At least the send-away presents are shipped, the Christmas cards are mailed, my cookie exchange boxes are sent... I'm getting worn out this year!

I refuse to stress out about Christmas.

Shopping has become a real pleasure since the advent of the internet, I have to say. Yes, I miss some of the atmosphere not being out on the high street, but I'll happily forego that along with the crowds, the overheated stores, the endless Christmas muzak, the queues, the trying to find a parking space... Urgh.

Nope, give me a few hours in front of the pc with my own choice of Christmas songs gently getting me in the festive mood and a glass of wine... Perfect. Plus, I just love these few weeks of anticipating the mailman every day, and seeing all those packages come in. Even if half of them aren't mine. I think choosing gifts for everyone is my favourite thing.

I think my one gripe would be writing Christmas cards. It's really the one bit of the whole season that I loathe. As my dentist complained the other day, it's like writing lines. /me waits for some of the guys to post back proving me wrong on that one.

Mostly though, I'm afraid I'm one of those really irritating people who never lost their wide-eyed wonder and pleasure in this season and still gets all kid-like at it all.

LabRat (wishing it could be Christmas every day...)

Well, outside of work (I work for a newspaper printing press, so it's our busiest season right now), I've learned to simplify the holidays a lot over the years-my husband and kids do most of the house seasonal decorations (I do the tree lights [LEDs this year,super simple] and garland only), my mom sends me baking as part of her holiday gift and I only pay cash for presents, no post-season bills to even worry about. That being said, I still find myself staggering into the malls way too early on Saturday mornings in order to get my shopping done since I hate crowds and I spent almost as much as I would have on a nice gift just to ship off presents to my family back east...*sighs*

Well, in my family my husband does his side of the family and our mutual friends since he likes to sit down and compose a short letter abvout what has happened over the course of the year while I'm happier doing a small note by hand because my family and personal friends stay in touch by e-mail anyhow so they don't need a lot of details. Either way, we got the cards out by the beginning of last week, hurrah!!

Rather than complain, I'd like to say "I'm done!! YAY!!" I got everything mailed out on Friday so, just to be silly I took my kids to MOA to look at decorations and watch OTHER people freaking out. Twas fun! We ate Godiva chocolate.

EDIT:

OO! I forgot to add, Abercrombe had a live model at the store entrance to attract customers. He was just too much! I would have taken a picture but my teen was too embarrassed.

I love Christmas and I always have. I normally start planning everything in November (or October) but still complain that you can't start getting Christmassy until at least the 25th Nov, and so this year I decided to wait until December to start preparing.

Which was fine, until I caught a particulary bad cold at the beginning of the month which knocked me back and now I've only just got round to posting my cards and putting up the decorations and I still have pretty much all of my presents to buy (including a birthday present for a friend who thoughtlessly decided to have her birthday at the beginning of January)!

So 2007 is my first year of true Christmas stress! I think I'm coping with it quite well, though. Having the decs up certainly has brightened my mood!

- Alisha

Waiting around for another relative to die. I think we're going for some kind of annual Christmas streak. It's okay, really. I'm okay. But it's gripeworthy.

In other news, I was buying my father these fish cups that he likes and some woman behind me was lodging a complaint that she was being ignored. The way she said it, we all kind of rolled our eyes at the counter. I knew she was bad news as soon we parked next to each other in the parking lot LOL.

And I hate traveling during the holidays but unfortunately none of my family lives in driving distance.

Ho ho ho and all that crap. I'm pretty sure the only holidays I like are Thanksgiving and New Year's. Even my own birthday is a pain, in my opinion. :p
JD