Our family Christmas's have always been elaborate, with way, way, way too many presents which is fine for one child, but now there are three kids under one roof and four couples buying for them, parents, two sets of grandparents and a pair of great grandparents. My children lack for NOTHING, absolutely nothing and I'm not always sure that is a good thing.
Of course it is good that they have all their needs met but every single want and whim catered to creates an attitude of carelessness and unappreciative, demanding kids are not appealing, or pleasant to be around.
Since the kids have been born Christmas mornings have been swamped with a ridiculous, over abundance of presents which honestly they can't even begin to play with, all of which after the grandparents have left for the holidays, Mark and I are the ones dealing with the 60 plus new toys, trying to find room for all of them and then inevitably end up being broken or missing pieces and get donated in time for the next gift onslaught brought on by Easter or Valentines day or birthdays.
I wish the kids could get one or two presents that they truly want and can appreciate and enjoy, they get so much that it's overwhelming and more disturbing is that this year they need nothing and are actually getting repeats of gifts that they got last year and have broken and/or lost since then, which is crazy to me, you mistreat, break your toys or lose them you don't just get another one. What does that teach? It doesn't matter how you treat your belongings because who cares? Someone will just get me another one? I can't stand it but nobody listens and how fun is it to argue with family over Christmas?
We've tried to get people to cut back and every year, they say they do but it's very hard to tell come Christmas morning.
So, December 1st rolls around and I dig out the Christmas CDs and the decorations and chop down the tree and I can usually fool myself into a happy mood for a week or two but it always fades. I'm finding it harder this year, I miss being home where it's crisp and cool, where snow is falling. This year being On Whidbey Island where it's grey, damp and cold, not cold enough too snow, but cold enough to make it miserable. My tree was a fiasco since minute one and now is dead, I have a dead dry, brown tree in my living room.
This year I anticipated the down swing and tried to add a giving aspect to the holidays with our 25 days of random acts of kindness, so that every day the kids would be reminded Christmas should be about giving, not receiving, as God gave his Son for us, but that has proven to be really, really discouraging and I'm sad to say on day 15 I have given up.
People really are awful and this experiment does drive home the lesson that God gave us the free gift of salvation and the world refused to accept it because I have felt that way with every thing we have done. The last straw was yesterday's act where we made stockings full of cat and dog toys and treats
and took one of our giant cookies to the WAIF animal shelter. Aislinn was so excited for this one, we
quickly trotted in the shelter office with her stockings and cookie and the workers there could not have been more rude and less appreciative. Now, I know we don't do this for appreciation, actually I really prefer the anonymous ones but these people dismissed Aislinn completely, looked at the stockings and were like, "we'll have to check with the manager to see what she wants us to do with these."
The whole situation was bad and with a little girl obviously deflated, I said, "well, Merry Christmas." And tried to leave but the woman said,
"well, you'll have to wait, I have to check and see if we need to write you a receipt." I told her not to bother but she said, "well we might have to." And went off into the back somewhere.
Seriously they made us feel like it was more of a hinderance to them. I was sick and disgusted and frankly I'm done. I'm all about trying to teach my kids about giving but the lesson that people are generally jerks, can wait to be learned until they are older.
So, with this very whiney and depressing post, I will try to forget the dead tree in my living room, the lack of snow outside, the impending Christmas morning of over anxious, over excited children which I will have to police, the after Christmas clean up, organizing and try to focus on time spent with family and forget the rest, because really that is all that matters, I sometimes wish we didn't have all this other stuff which just brings stress.
This blog is called Sailing SweetHaven and we haven't had a post about the boat in weeks it seems, which is just making everything worse, I can't stand the niggling feeling that this standstill will be never ending.
We are off to Leavenworth up in the mountains tomorrow, I am really hoping the few days away, in a Bavarian village all lit up for Christmas and actual snow and maybe finally get out skiing will help to alleviate these holiday blues.
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