Holiday Overload

Does this happen every year? No, not Christmas. I'm almost positive Christmas is an annual event.

I'm speaking about the insanity surrounding Christmas. I know I get wound up and start worrying about the gifts I'm giving people. I stress and fret because I want each gift to be the perfect one, and I fall short so, so often. It's funny, really, because I want each gift to be a symbol of how close we are, but not knowing what to get probably signifies that we simply aren't close at all. But in that case I want the gift to symbolize my intent to bridge the gap.

Anyway, on top of the gift search for my family, I do Holiday Cards. I know they are falling out of favor. I've read articles about how social networking sites have made them obsolete. Thanks to Facebook I not only can look at my haven't-seen-you-since-high-school's family vacation photos, I can hear about what my cousin is having for lunch. In this context, a Holiday Card with a posed photograph seems expensive and almost wasteful. But I like getting them, and so I send them, as a gesture to people I don't see very often that we have been thinking of them.

We put up decorations in the house. Modest ones, really. Just electric candles in the windows. A tree. And inexplicably a light up Winnie-The-Pooh on a sled the kids really love. As soon as the decorations go up, the kids start to crack. It's too much - the shopping, the boxes arriving in the mail that I refuse to open in front of them, the music everywhere...

And the schools are no help. They drill the holidays into the kids even worse than I do. There are parties and Holiday Concerts, all on different days from each other and different for each child. There are gift swaps, each requiring specific items at different times for different age ranges - Andy needs a wrapped book by Monday and Nate needs a wrapped puzzle by Friday, Nick needs a small gift on Friday, Nate's concert Friday, Andy's Party Monday, Nate's Party Wednesday, Nick needs a bigger gift Thursday, and his party is on that day...

And then I need teacher gifts, which I'll post about later, but involves baking. And the items can go stale, so I can't just make all fifteen of them at once... fifteen because each child has two teachers, but then I added up all piano teachers, gymnastics, karate, etc.

I'm nervous because I'm afraid I'm going to forget someone or not do something and then someone will feel bad. Someone will think I won't love them. Or don't care about something. And I do. I really do. Even though a more logical part of me, a part trying to make itself heard, keeps shouting that my in-laws will have a good time Christmas Eve even if I don't wash the kitchen floor.

The boys must be picking up on my stress. And added to the excitement of Christmas, the music, the decorations, the practicing Good King Wenceslas every single night... is it any wonder that Nathan can't look me in the eye because he can't keep still? And that I have to tell the boys six times to pick out pyjamas only to have Nick try and put Nate in a Time Out for touching his toys?

I wish I could turn Christmas off for a day. I wish there were a way to not do or see or expose my children to it, just for one day...