Oh Boy...The Holidays Are Here!

Post by: Heather Christena Schmidt @ HeatherChristenaSchmidt.com.

 

"Oh Boy...The Holidays Are Here!"

 

Can you sense the sarcasm? In a candy coma, we all turned on the television this morning and saw our first Christmas ads. At CVS they were playing Christmas music, and when I went to Starbucks to get some tea it was in some "rejoice the holidays" crap of a cup.

 

And yet it's terribly cliche to even talk about how the holidays come earlier every year. Of course they do. Everyone knows that. I can remember my mom saying that when I was eight - over twenty years ago. People want deals. Retailers want your money. Thanksgiving isn't about family anymore, it's about food. Christmas isn't about Jesus, it's about what you got me. Obviously that all comes earlier and earlier every year because it has become so much (excess).

 

So I'm feeling a little weary about the holidays already. Maybe it's because Michael's has had their Christmas stuff strewn all over the store for close to a month now. Possibly it's because I'm already done with my holiday shopping, making that blown up air globe at Home Depot that much more annoying.

 

The thing that really gets me about the holiday season is not really "the holidays," though. It isn't the money you feel like you have to spend, which could be better spent on a vacation to some resort away from all the people you don't want to spend the holidays with, but inevitably do anyway. It isn't the influx of obligatory family functions. It isn't the materialism of it all, which (quite frankly) makes me feel a little sick every time I think of it. It isn't all the food and calories and saturated fats.

 

It's the pace with which the holidays come.

 

Halloween has an historical basis, as far as the date is concerned. But Thanksgiving is rooted in a tradition that happened approximately once a month during harvest times. And despite my Catholicism, I am fully aware of the probability that Jesus was actually born in a different time of year than December (which many of my science-loving Catholics agree on). My point is: why, then, do we have to cram Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years into a two month period of chaos, stress, never-ending social obligations, more stress, busyness, and debt, all topped with just one more pinch of stress to make it unbearable? Quite frankly, it's because the holidays are not about those things anymore.

 

I firmly believe that if the holiday season were not a "season," but rather just one, or maybe two, of those holidays, with the others spread out through out the year, life would be much better.

Don't get me wrong, I will do it all, and with a smile. I will cook and clean for our annual Thanksgiving party. I will attend all the Thanksgiving dinners and try to shove just one more bite of mashed potatoes down my throat to make my mother in law happy. I'll do the Christmas thing and toast the New Year like every good American does.

But I'm not going to like it. I'm going to be tired come January, and ready for a vacation. I think we all will.