My Christmas traditions are all out of whack, and I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Ever since Hubby and I married, I have put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. I avoid Black Friday shopping like the plague (ha ha ha ha ha -- I made a funny . . . You know, Black Plague? Black Friday? avoid it like . . . never mind), and I usually put on some Christmas music and put up the tree.
This year we were "camping" (what is the verb? RVing?) at a state park, and there was football to be watched when we got home. I had all day last Sunday, but I didn't think about the tree. Once I'm out of my routine, it's pretty much out of my brain. Yesterday I spent with Katydid and our mother, and today . . . Well again, I had all day, but I didn't do it. Hubby didn't get the tree out of the storage building for me, so I'll use that as my excuse. I could do it myself, but I married him just for chores like that one.
I don't really have any shopping to do. Hubby and I have stopped buying gifts for each other. We agree on something we would like to have, and we pool our money for it. Last year it was a trip to the casino on Christmas Day. This year we are both planning to get new cell phones. Sweet Girl isn't coming home for Christmas, and apparently I cannot possibly buy the right things for her, so she's getting gift cards. Unless she tells me otherwise. Sullen Teenager gets a mall gift card, because all she wants are clothes and more clothes. We wouldn't dare try to buy FOR her. Weesa is getting a GPS (and I hope she doesn't have the link to this blog anymore), so we have that to buy. I ordered a decorative something for my mother-in-law only because Hubby thinks buying her a box of chocolate and giving her $100 every year is okay. My siblings and I don't exchange gifts, and we stopped trying to buy anything for our mother years ago.
We have a big meal at mother-in-law's house on Christmas Day, the only day she insists on cooking and having everything at her house. Her house is tiny and there are approximately 16 of us all together. She lives right down at the end of our road, approximately 100 yards, and we are always the last ones there. And the first ones to leave.
Sometimes we go to a movie on Christmas Day. That's what Hubby and I did the year before we got married. In fact, that was the day he met my mother. We met Katydid and the Barracuda at the mall, and I introduced everyone. Hubby was trying valiantly to say the right thing, so he told the Barracuda, "I'm going to take care of your daughter."
To which the Barracuda replied, "You better."
And he married me anyway.
If we don't go to a movie, we go to the park for a much-needed walk after all that food. Then we come home and take naps and call ourselves watching football. Hubby usually has to work the day after Christmas, so that is when I take the tree down. This year he won't have to work, so maybe I'll coerce him into helping me. Depending on the weather. Odds are good that he will go play golf. And that's fine too.
Christmas is so different when you don't have "kids" anymore. Should I start wishing for grandchildren?
1 comment:
I know how it is when traditions get out of whack- we're having that this year at our house as well.
The year my mom died Daddy-O, Mac and I went to a movie: "National treasure II". Since Guard is working Christmas Day this year, the three of us are going to do it again and see "Sherlock Holmes." (Mac begged me please not make him see "It's Complicated")
It does sound like you have the shopping under control. I've been told by many folks this year that you can't go wrong with gift cards.
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