Christmas Light

T-minus seven days until Christmas and I am done with all my shopping.

It truly is a Christmas miracle.

Watch for all the flying pigs, people.

I really don’t get into all the Christmas hub-bub like shopping or decorating or baking. It’s just not my thing. I work with all these crazy middle-aged women who are constantly freaking out over how “only one of their seven trees are decorated” and they “just can’t do anything with the mantle in their sitting room” and “oh my goodness heavens to Betsy, they can’t find their Christmas linens and their 17 million family members are going to be in town tomorrow” and “can you believe they started shopping on December 26, 2005, and they still aren’t done with all their shopping and ooh, they are so tired from staying up until 4 am gift wrapping last night”.

I just smile and nod because they might as well be speaking another language. In fact, I wish they were speaking another language because try as might to block out their nasally rants, some of it manages to infiltrate my crazylady-brain barrier and at least if it was in another language, me no comprehendo.

I so do not get why people do this to themselves over the holidays. They bitch and whine and moan over how much work it is to get out their holiday Pfaltzgraff , bake 16 million dozen cookies, hyperventilate over the Belk’s flier in the Sunday paper, and then have the audacity to suggest that people like me who see no reason to go bat-shit crazy shopping and take out a second mortgage to put inflatable snowmen and 14 million twinkling lights in my yard don’t understand the true reason of Christmas- the big JC’s birthday.

What would Jesus do? He certainly wouldn’t skip line in front of a woman holding not one but TWO children at the Macy’s counter and He certainly wouldn’t lament to all that are forced to listen about His binge eating on cookies and fudge and hey, I may not have the Bible memorized verbatim but I’m pretty sure He wouldn’t need to up his dosage of Paxil to help deal with the hanging of Christmas towels.

Maybe I’m just lazy, but when I think about going all crazy for Christmas and spending tons of money and redecorating my entire house for the season and cooking and eating until I want to puke, I just want to curl up in bed until the New Year. It’s just so not me and for the life of me, why would anyone want to drive themselves nuts doing it all? What’s the point? If you’re celebrating the secular aspects of Christmas then why would you want to anything that increased your stress levels to that degree and if you’re celebrating the whole “Jesus is the reason for the season” aspect of Christmas then you’ve really missed the ark. I’m sure some people enjoy it but most people just complain and declare year after year, “This is the last time I’m doing all this for Christmas!”

We have some lights and ribbon on our house and one small tree with lights- no ornaments (I didn’t want to go crazy watching the kids break all of them and throw them at each other and use the hangers for eye-poker-outers). My biggest display is a silver tree that is used to showcase all of the cards we receive during the season. I don’t plan on doing any baking or cooking- although the husband will probably do some- and if the wrapping isn’t done by 10:00 pm, it can wait until the next day.

I shopped last weekend and this weekend with both the kids and while usually, shopping with the kids would be akin to some sort of extreme sport of Fear Factor episode, I really tried to keep it low-key and move at their pace. It took us four hours to go to three stores yesterday. If Gavin wanted to stop and smell all the perfumes in Dillard’s and stick out his tongue at his reflection in every mirror in New York and Company then so be it. If Grace wanted to ride the elevator a couple of times then we rode the elevator a couple of times. When we went out to lunch and Gavin only wanted to eat the chips and Grace only wanted to eat the cookie then we smiled and made silly faces over their sweet and salty lunch. We put off shopping on Saturday for Gavin to go to a school mate’s birthday party and while all the moms stood around discussing “OMG THE HOLIDAYS ARE SO STRESSFUL!!!” I chased the kids around playing tag. The only time constraint I put on us while shopping was that we had to be done with enough time for the kids to play outside and enjoy our unseasonably warm weather.

The only “OMG” moments during our shopping were when Gavin announced in the middle of the mall “I’M PEEING!!!!!!!!!” and yanked down his pants and underwear right there for all to see. Thankfully, we made it to the bathroom in time. Also, I made the HUGE mistake of trying on clothes in front of Grace. I took off my shirt and she was all “nurse, nurse, nurse, nurse, NUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRSSSSSSEEEE!!!!!” I, of course, had no intentions of nursing Grace because that would have left Gavin with ample opportunity to shimmy out from under the dressing room door and indecently expose his self in front of the entire mall again.

Good times.