Warning: This is a grumpy, whiny, self-pitying post. Move on to greener pastures here if you aren’t interested.
Most years I love Christmas time. I love decorating the house, putting candles in the windows, making cookies with my mother, preparing Christmas cards and sending them to 60+ family, friends and coworkers, selecting and buying presents, wrapping and finally giving presents, cutting down a tree with my family and decorating it, holiday parties, and holiday food and most importantly, spending time with family and friends. Generally everyone is in a good mood for the entire month. People are more generous and friendly, everyone smiles and wishes you a Merry Christmas. Kids are excited and happy, in my little world, Christmas time is a great time of year.
Except this year. This year it sucks. I haven’t been able to drum up even an ounce of excitement for this huge holiday looming in front of me. I don’t want to see any Christmas lights on houses because it just mocks the fact that I can’t have any lights in my rental house this year. The same with decorations. I don’t have a single Christmas decoration up in my house – not one. They’re packed away in boxes, buried under mounds of stuff. I feel like I’m completely failing my kids in the decorating department. It makes me want to cry whenever I think about it. We’ve figured out most of what we need to buy for Christmas this year, but we haven’t figured out where we’re going to come up with the cash to pay for them. And, even when we do finally buy the gifts, the presents under the tree are going to be sparse this year, and even though our kids are too young to notice, Zach and I know that, and want to be able to give them more…
I’m so stressed about money (or lack thereof) and about our house sale/purchase (eventually…) that I’ve mostly stopped sleeping. Even though my children are finally sleeping well, I’m awake at ridiculous hours of the night fretting and worrying about everything that we’re precariously balancing at the moment. So not only am I grumpy about Christmas, I’m just tired in general which just makes it harder for me to hide my grumpiness.
I have to miss one of the holiday parties this year – with 2 little kids it’s just too much to chase them around an office party. I had small hopes that perhaps the party would be at our house, which would have eliminated that difficulty, but it’s not. So, Zach will go to the party, and I’ll stay home with the boys. The holiday party for my office is new, different, and I’m not sure what to expect (besides having to come back to work for 2 hours after the party – the day before the holiday break…)
After sick kids and broken vehicles and (someday) closing on our house, I won’t have enough vacation days to take the whole week of Christmas off. So while everyone else is home and the office is empty, I’ll be working.
I’m going through the motions, but I’m not excited about any of it this year. I’ve mentioned this a few times, hoping someone might be able to help me find some Christmas spirit, to help me put some real joy back into the season, but I’ve come up empty. We’re in a strange house that I can’t decorate, and we don’t have any money. I don’t want to do Christmas. If we didn’t have kids, I’d beg Zach to just skip it. But we do have kids, so I’m forcing myself through the motions, but I’m miserable doing it. I’ve turned into one of those people who hates the holidays, and I hate that about myself.
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