Christmas Spirit

Coming in my front door today with the last few gifts I had to buy in tow, I noticed that the first smell I can sense when entering the house is now the Christmas tree in the living room. Man, that tree smells soooo good. We got a particularly fresh one this year and you can tell. I love all of the traditional cozy smells of Christmas. Baking cookies and fires in the fireplaces and trees, etc, etc. But as I was thinking about things I like about Christmas, I also realized there are things I dislike about this season. Really only 2 things if you narrow it down to the ones that really bother me. One is the fact that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are so hectic for most people, including us. It used to be worse. A couple years ago my sister and I decided to be brave and tell my grandmother that we wanted to get together some other time than Christmas Eve. It was not pretty, but the whole family got over it and the date has been forever changed to the night before Christmas Eve. It is so much better- we are not rushed, we have nowhere else to be and we can spend as much time with everyone there as we like. However, my husband's lovely family still has this "get-together" on Christmas Eve that involves about 40 people in his family and they all come to a gathering hall at a church and we eat cold food and sit with the people we see all the time and everyone races out of there because almost everyone has somewhere else to be. Now, I ask you, what exactly is the point in that? We don't see these people any other time in the year. Know why? I do. So, why would I want to spend precious Christmas Eve time with these people when all I think about is wanting to go home and be with my kids and watch Christmas movies and drink hot chocolate? I know, makes no sense. And the older people in the family say it is because "we need to see our family and spend time with them on Christmas." What kind of time do you spend when everyone sits with their immediate families and then high-tails it out of there? Mark my words, that will change at some point. It is a mission of mine. I don't think Christmas should be so hectic and stressful- there are already enough things taking away from the meaning of the season, we don't need that, too. Anyway- the second thing that I can't stand about this time of year is the fact that there are always one or two toys that get sold out and people will end up paying hundreds of dollars for something as ridiculous as a Tickle Me Elmo. There are so many better things to do with your money. I know people who will spend whatever it takes to get their kids whatever their little hearts desire. It just makes me want to puke. If it were my child, I would use that time to have the "you don't always get what you want" talk and have a life lesson learned. In fact, we have had to have that talk before and the girls have not gotten plenty of things they wanted and they are just fine and lived to tell about it. I am so bad that Annelise thinks she can't even ask for something at Target unless it has "one of those little red stickers" on it. Hey- they will thank me later. Even with these things that rake my nerves this time of year, I still love it. I am looking forward to the girls getting out of school and making our annual Christmas cookies for neighbors and family with them. I look forward to talking about the birth of Christ before they go to bed Christmas Eve. I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when they see what Santa brought on Christmas morning. The good certainly outweighs the bad.