Christmas in October?
This is a confusing time of year and I blame it on the stores. Am I getting ready for Halloween or am I buying decorations for Christmas? We decorate for the holidays but I do it by months. I have no idea what I need for Christmas decorations until December 1st. By then, all the decorations will be gone from the stores. I’m so confused…
However, one thing I do do (I said dodo:) is start buying Christmas gifts early. I have always done this and it came from necessity. I couldn’t afford to buy all the gifts in December so I started early and spread it out over several months–usually October to December. I usually bought the Christmas cards by November because I would get a discount and would mail out the cards the first week of December.
These have been my practices for a long time. My family rolls their eyes every time at me, but they know how I operate. Now that I am retired and have more free time, I’m really getting ready. Yes, I have already talked to them about when we will take the picture for the Christmas card and for them to start thinking of how to handle gifts this year.
This is my dilemma—gifts—and I need your help. I’m looking for suggestions. Not what to buy them but how to handle this gift giving issue. Here’s the back story…
When my daughters were young, we would do the whole cookies and milk for Santa, reindeer food for Rudolph and the gang for Christmas Eve. I had read somewhere that you start a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve and it was always new Christmas pajamas. That way, everyone wore them for Christmas Day and it looked great in pictures. So, we did that every year and also would watch Christmas movies. We were lucky and only had to go to Joe’s mom’s house on Christmas Day, so Christmas Eve was our own family tradition. It was a great tradition for a long time.
Then the girls got older. We still did the pajamas and movies thing, but Christmas Eve seemed to be missing something. I was talking to my friend one day who has two girls exactly the same age as my girls and she told us what they did in their family. They would do something special for Christmas Eve like go to a play. I thought that was a great idea so we added that to our tradition. There was always some play that was open on Christmas Eve since we live in Chicago. We started a new tradition of having a nice dinner, going to a play and then coming home to open our pajamas and watch movies. Perfect!!
Then Covid hit. Obviously there was no place for a few years during Covid and then after Covid, no plays were scheduled on Christmas Eve. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t wanna work on Christmas Eve either, but it put a little bump in our plans. We pivoted once again and decided to just do dinner but do a very expensive dinner. For the past few years, we’ve been going to Michael Jordan‘s restaurant and having a full dinner: drinks, appetizers, entrées, and desserts. The whole thing. It’s very expensive but it’s the one night out of the year and it’s our Christmas tradition. It is still downtown Chicago so we love it. Then we come home to open the pajamas (although now I get them just for the girls—Joe and I are done with new pajamas because we have so many now from the past years) and watch movies.
Where I’m running into some problems are gifts. My daughters are in need of nothing and they will tell you that. They live on their own and make their own money. Joe and I need nothing and we will tell you that too. We are all adults. We want something and we think we need it, then we buy it. Yes, there are things that I would love to have and I cannot buy. For instance, I would love a new car, a new house, some diamond earrings, etc. But of course I’m not gonna buy these things and no one else is going to either for a Christmas gift. Every year, when I’m trying to buy the girls something and their significant others and even trying to come up with ideas of what they could buy me, it is always a huge struggle. One daughter lives out of state, and when she comes in for Christmas, sometimes she flies. Because of this, we have the presents delivered to her house. The easiest way to do this, of course, is Amazon. So for the past few years, we each make a list on Amazon and send it to everybody and then everybody chooses what they wanna buy on the list as a gift for you. But as I said before, we are all struggling, trying to find something to put on the list. And then, is it really a present or is it just crossing off things on a list about items we don’t really need or what? This is neither fun, exciting, or what Christmas is really about.
Joe and the girls feel the same way too. Because the family knows I start very early buying the gifts, this has already been talked about what to do this year. We decided on a new game plan and maybe it will work—I just don’t know. There are 5 of us with my son-in-law, so we will draw names. Then, on a document that I already created, we will write down things we would like to have, but no link to that gift. You can describe it but it is up to the buyer to get that gift for you without you actually picking out the gift. You put down several ideas so what they do buy you will be a “surprise”. We have set a spending amount also.
At least this will give a little element of surprise, instead of getting many gifts from everyone, it is just a gift from your Secret Santa, yet you still get to put down something you might like to have. I still want to get something for everyone, but I can indulge by doing stockings. I love stockings. I can buy things like lotion, lip balm, candy, chocolates, gift cards, Santa Pez, etc. It can be a lot of inexpensive fun things. I like doing that and will continue to do that.
We will see this year how this new idea works. What do you do? Do you have some ideas and suggestions? I would love to hear them. Either about gifts or Christmas Eve traditions. Please email me with your thoughts: LifeLessonsFromMemaw@gmail.com
October Tip–Don’t eat all the Halloween candy before the trick-or-treaters:) And don’t forget to watch Hocus Pocus.
BEST. MOVIE. EVER.
Blog Website: https://www.lifelessonsfrommemaw.com/
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