Daily Mess

When i was little Christmas was easy.  The “big gift” was an easy bake oven for me or a crappy recorder for my brothers.  There were a few small gifts and we thought we had all died and gone to heaven.  My, how things have changed.  Yeah, yeah, I know our standard of living has come up a lot since the “good old days” but when the kids hand you Christmas lists that have no less than a grand worth or “must have’s” on it, things are getting out of hand.  If you have several kids, Christmas can be a huge expense and a real strain on family finances.

Part of the problem is I am all about Christmas, all about spoiling the kids, somehow thinking the bigger the Christmas, the more they will know they are loved.  Of course this makes no sense at all, but put me in a store with all the latest gadgets and I lose my mind.  I rationalize things, I lamely attempt to talk myself out of things, but there is no stopping me.  I am a mad woman on a mission and that is to make each Christmas the stuff dreams are made of.

Does it work?  Is more better?  I can’t answer that question, all I know is that when we were financially strapped one year,  we happened to laugh more and enjoy the holidays more than we ever did.  Was that the lack of gifts, or was that just circumstance I will never know, and I don’t plan on finding out.  I would rather die with my kids knowing that sometimes I went overboard, that I took every opportunity to show them I loved them.

So bring on the Christmas madness, I will be right in there, knocking over the old ladies to get the last of one of my kids “must have’s” and I won’t even cry when the credit card bills come in.  Ok, I may sniffle just a bit, but you can’t take your money with you, and something my mother used to say will ring in my ears forever.

“I would rather spend the money on my children now, when I can see the smile on their faces, than make them wait until I am dead to enjoy it”