This year I have been struggling a bit with Christmas being Jesus's birthday and how to celebrate that. I keep thinking "when I have kids I will ..." "when I get married we will..." Not sure why I can't start anything now.
For me birthdays are the big deal with lots of presents all about you. Christmas is about Jesus and family and spending time together and giving to others.
So what does that look like? Currently it looks like going through my closets and taking a sack full of goodies down to the Open Door Mission. Donating money to and buying stuff for Christmas in Village One, and just generally trying to be nicer to people and show them the love of Christ.
But tonight I sat down to make my Christmas lists. My list of things I need to buy for the ones I love. I am 100% behind the idea of buying things because I see something you would love, not because I need to buy you something. And that is the standard rule I follow when it comes to my friends. Which can get a little akward at times due to them giving me gifts and me not getting them anything in return, but Christmas isnt and shouldnt be about buying things just for the sake of buying them.
But family, that is a different story. In my family we draw names between my siblings and inlaws. Then we either do a group gift or individual for my parents and now there are 3 grandkids.
We also send out lists, so people have something to go off of. I started making out lists and ideas of what I want to buy one of my sisils (who I have this year) and already had some stuff in mind prior to recieving her actual list. I know one thing for sure and will go to the mall tomorrow (maybe if I ever go to bed) to look at some other stuff on her list. My parents are done thanks to a group gift this year, which I just need to wrap before they come to town on Thursday (even though they prob wont come into my apartment).
As I starting thinking about what to buy my niece and nephews I got a little overwhelmed. Not so much about what to buy a 3 yr old and two 1 yr olds, cuz I have their lists and like I said before birthdays are a bigger deal to me so Christmas is going to be an outfit and toy or book or movie. But I got overwhelmed at the thought that one child will have 6 people buying for them. And if I know my family there will a bit of over buying. It also stresses me out thinking about the possiblity of duplicate gifts. When we draw names I can just call my mom and confirm with her what she is buying, and then all I have to think about is the outlaws of married siblings if I have their name. But with the kids there are 5 other houses I need to contact. For some reason at their birthdays this did not worry me but now I am stressing.
Definetly going to call my mom tomorrow and talk about it to her and probably my little sister as well. So I will know 2 of the 5, hopefully.
Also a got a little stressed when I realized that Christmas is a little over 10 days away and I have to shop, wrap and ship all my presents this week to guarentee that they will get there before Christmas. And now that I thought about that I just got more stressed.
I went from fun night of Christmas planning watching Polar Express and drinking hot cocoa to stressing out. Hopefully I can turn off my brain and get some sleep so I can go in early to do shopping instead of waiting til 6pm when everyone is off work and the stores get crazy.
