Hold the Scrooge!

Okay, I'm really not a Scrooge.  Although hubs thinks I am.  I get frustrated with the commercialism of our holidays in the US but I love the actual meaning of the season.  We just forget to actually celebrate it and instead have taken the gifts given to Jesus to a much higher level ~ X-boxes, iPads, Kindle Fires. It's just so crazy what we go through each year.  When I was a child my parents had a moderate income.  I can remember watching my mom use her "special card" when we would bustle around for the Christmas holiday.  Yep, the special card was her VISA.  Oh yeah, it was special alright.  My dad would then work to pay it back over the next year.  I wonder what their buyer's remorse must have felt like and how they must have felt going into the next holiday season and doing it all over again.

I think this is where I get cranky.  Material items have never been important to me.  Even as a kid, I didn't have all that "stuff".  I was the outdoor, tomboy girl in the neighborhood.  I didn't spend a lot of time with other girls, I played tag, kickball, army sometimes with the boys in the 'hood.  Shoot, climbing trees was way more exciting to me than playing... what do girls play?  Make believe stuff I think, like house or school or something.  No way, that was my reality so there was no way I was going to hang out with other girls and play that way.

I avoided Black Friday.  I'll avoid Cyber Monday as well.  Maybe I'll pick up a few things in a couple of weeks if I must.  But for the record, I don't really want to.  It's not that I don't love to give ~ I do!  It's just the thought of SHOPPING that wears me out before I even get started.

Plus, little known fact about me... I am a purpose shopper.  I don't "go shopping".  I don't just wander through stores and look at stuff.  If I NEED something, I go get it.  That might also cause me some of this stress level of the holidays.  We don't really "need" it.

Well, I promised no Scrooge so I'm going to try really, really hard.  If I finish decorating the house I'm sure that will help.  It better!