"The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"

Actually, it was back to school, not December in my book.

Christmas as the parent of a large family of healing children is NOT an easy time of year. If you ever read Cindy's blog, you’ll see that her kids freak out this time of year as well.

There are several reasons why I do not look forward to Christmas.

1) We have kids that do not do holidays well. We have two kids who had a mom who sold their birthday and Christmas gifts a few days after the holiday to get drug money. Now, do you think these kids have EVER been able to celebrate a normal holiday? They don’t even remember anymore why holidays are hard for them, but no matter how old they get, having a good holiday with them, especially one that involved any gift-giving whatsoever, is very difficult.

2) The standard in our community for gifts is too high in our opinion. We try to keep our spending down to about $100 a kid, but compared to their friends, our kids feel like they are getting very little.

3) The amount of effort required to get ready for a holiday that will not be all that fun is amazing. First we have to shop (which is what we are heading for our first round of today -- bringing to mind the content of this blog). Then we have to wrap (which actually isn’t too bad because a lady from our church helps me). Usually there are at least 100 gifts under the tree by the time we are done. That’s a LOTTA wrapping.

4) We never go anywhere. My husband is a pastor with two Christmas Eve services, so we never go anywhere. And this year Christmas is on Sunday, so how weird is that going to be?

I could go on but I’m depressing myself when I actually don’t feel all that bad about Christmas. I enjoy it, really I do.

It’s 5 below outside (according to my husband, I haven’t looked) and we’re heading out to fight the crowds and be appalled by the commercialism of a celebration that was such a humble event.

How many people will celebrate with extreme measures the birth of a Savior who they don’t accept as there’s or even believe exists?

This is turning into a yucky blog, and it wasn’t intended to.

I’m really not a scrooge. Honestly!