It’s countdown time with a vengeance:  only five more days until Christmas!

I hate to put this up here because Laura will go into spasms but while I’ve bought all the gifts for my family members, I still have some gifts to buy for friends.  And I’m not completely done wrapping gifts [although I've wrapped about 85% of the gifts I've bought].  And I haven’t baked a single thing, although there are recipes that I’m dying to try.  And I only have five days to get this all together.  And I’m working from 9-5pm, then 6-10:30pm today and tomorrow!

And the mailing of cards…that’s suffered too.  I can’t decide if it’s now more important to pay extra to get the cards there on time [if that's even possible at this late date] or to hope that friends will not think that I didn’t think of them, but rather that I didn’t mail the cards off early enough, which is a diifferent matter entirely…although it may not seem that way.  I’ll have to decide what to do.  I already emailed one friend and told her that her gift would be late.  Thankfully her reply was that my gift would be late too so neither of us has to feel badly about it.

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My parents returned to Canada at the end of November and since then my mom has been working the crazy hours that come with working in retail during the Christmas season.  Their trip was quite an expense and was also somewhat draining on them emotionally, so it’s a shame neither parent was able to take time off to just recuperate from the trip; instead they had to jump into their hectic schedules and resume dealing with some of the less pleasant aspects of their [working] life.  So I wasn’t suprised or crushed last week when my mom said that she still hadn’t started Christmas shopping.  I told her not to bother and if she did decide to buy us gifts and wanted ideas for the siblings, I could give her some and help her with the shopping if needed.  Otherwise, it was not a big deal if they didn’t buy us presents this year.

Today I returned home from a dental appointment to see her adorable face looking less happy than usual and when I asked her what was wrong she tearfully expressed that she was overwhelmed several things, including the fact that she hadn’t yet bought gifts or sent out Christmas cards.  My dad [earlier] and I were able to remind her that “better late than never” does apply to Christmas.  Platitudes are quite handy [and true] in situations like this. 

I know what it’s like to be overwhelmed and stressed to the point where you just want it to be December 26 already because that has been me for so many years.  I know I get stressed when I can’t think of a wonderful gift idea for someone that I desperately want to buy a gift for and this is the first year where I have done quite well with buying and wrapping gifts in a timely manner.  And for all the gifts I have yet to buy, I know what I want to get so that’s satisfying too.  But this year is special.  This year I feel much more in the Christmas spirit than ever.  So much so that I’ve been singing along to Christmas music in the malls, smiling at people more as I walk through the mall or a busy street and today I did something I almost never do:  I gave money to a stranger.  A young man who was playing Christmas music on his bagpipes so moved me, as I hummed along to his playing, that it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Filed under: Celebrations, Family by jummy