Thank Goodness, that's over!

Christmas and New Year celebrations are finally over for another year … thank goodness! Each year I approach the season with trepidation and dread, racking my brains for ideas for gifts for those to whom “one must” give gifts because it is expected and then trying to find those special gifts for those to whom one actually wishes to give gifts.

Yet again, though, I have survived. Found and given gifts to those to whom I wished to give gifts; worked out something to give to those to whom I owe the ‘duty’ of a gift; and yet again, and to my surprise, mostly enjoyed myself!
I think the major difference this year was that I have had a little bit extra in the money department. So that more of the day to day bills were cleared before the Christmas excess had to be accounted for, and that I was able to set aside a little extra in the last few weeks so that I had that little bit extra to spend. Amazing the difference that little bit of extra financial ease can make to one’s enjoyment of this silly season.

But why is it that Christmas, which I remember from my childhood and early adulthood as being a special time where one planned and enjoyed shopping for both duty and desire gifts, has become a time to stress over the most effective way of finding inexpensive gifts that still look nice and don’t break the budget. Is it that the cost of things has increased in general, or that the advertising becomes more strident about buying this, that, or the other trinket, and that folk become stressed from the choice of it all?

However, I think that the whole commercial aspect of it can be summed up in the gift of bath salts that my son received from the family “Kris Kringle”. They were CRA Products … in other words “crap”!
I can’t recall a time in the last few years when I have seen my boy reduced to an incapacitated heap of giggles, dimples and everything. But this particular gift certainly reduced him to that delightful state. And I will admit that he has delighted in crowing about it to his friends, who have all snorted appropriately in agreement *g*.

Be that as it may, I can honestly say that this has been the most enjoyable Christmas I have survived in perhaps five years. Perhaps I will be able to find some other way of enjoying Christmas next year … a house with proper air-conditioning might be a nice start, so that I can sleep properly during the summer months. But I would settle for a paddling pool!

I can always dream *G*