Here we are, parked at the start of a holiday season.<\/p>\n
That said, you can basically put the entire human species into one of two camps:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Those who started shopping for presents the day after last Christmas; and<\/p>\n
\u2022 Those who will start shopping for presents by Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
Most of my life, I\u2019ve fallen squarely into the latter camp. My ability to put off the biggest gift day of the year was honed from years of living with a mother who finished her Christmas shopping by July. Thanks to a younger brother who hated surprises and who would hold a stethoscope to the wall to monitor my mother\u2019s movements, I\u2019d usually know by September what I was getting for Christmas.<\/p>\n
So, after years of non-surprises, and aided by a thrill-seeking mentality, I began to buy my presents later and later into each holiday season. And then, after giving birth to a kid who hates surprises nearly as much as my brother (but who never got a stethoscope), I began buying presents as close to Christmas Day as I could. The hope was to delay the inevitable rooting through all available closet space that would occur.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I realize that if I\u2019d just left the gifts in plain sight, she probably never would have noticed them. Our house on a good day looked like a toy store had merged and exploded with a sippy-cup factory. At one point, my daughter opted to sleep under a table in the living room. We called it \u201ccamping\u201d at the time, but looking back, I am wondering if it was due more to lack of space in her bedroom. The underside of a table probably seemed a lot more spacious than her landfill of a room.<\/p>\n
Today, my daughter is a teenager. And my cramped house has given way to a relatively spacious town house. You can see the rug nearly all the time, and our walls actually support artwork that is framed. Unlike the old days of college and early motherhood, I know where my keys are most of the time.<\/p>\n
And REALLY unlike the good old days, that found me cruising the beer section on Christmas Day to purchase my dad a \u201cBeers of the World\u201d gift sampler, I actually know what I am purchasing him this year.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already bought my daughter her two main Christmas gifts (although I\u2019ve hidden them so well I\u2019m not sure where they are, at the moment.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve purchased the candy for her stocking.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m even starting TO LOOK like my mom.<\/p>\n
What is happening here?<\/p>\n
I think what\u2019s happening is that I am becoming a mature adult. That\u2019s a moniker for what I used to call an \u201cold lady.\u201d I guess it\u2019s finally started to happen, at age 45.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure about this.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 Christmas is better when you\u2019re not ripping your hair out over beer samplers \u2013 but it\u2019s a trade-off, too. I used to be the one who could throw together some truly amazing stuff at the last minute, to ensure everyone got something for the holidays, when I wasn\u2019t buying them creatively bottled beer. Most of the time, I didn\u2019t have two dimes to rub together, so the artistic inspiration came from a real place \u2013 poverty.<\/p>\n
Some of those deadline-driven pictures of mine are still hanging on people\u2019s walls. At the time, I didn\u2019t realize what they actually were \u2013 a personal gesture over a commercial one.<\/p>\n
One Christmas my parents received a massive wooden plaque from me with the family coat of arms painted on it, complete with real deer antlers that I\u2019d screwed in. It was my most broke Christmas ever, in college. But that was one cool gift, even if the antlers eventually did fall off.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, I\u2019ve got a career and a bazillion other things to do, and Christmas doesn\u2019t feel the same. I am actually planning for it. I am figuring out ahead of time what to buy people.<\/p>\n
So help me God, this is not where I thought I\u2019d be. I\u2019m one step away from shopping on Black Friday. And from there, it\u2019s a slippery slope to receiving a remote boat and a snuggle sack for Christmas \u2013 and actually being excited about this.<\/p>\n
This Christmas, I\u2019m grabbing back the days of my youth. I\u2019m reclaiming my broke, college-day, gift-making mojo.<\/p>\n
Someone out there is getting handmade gift from me, whether that means I\u2019m making them a popsicle-stick hacienda or turning a ham container into a bird feeder.<\/p>\n
Christmas may be about giving, but it\u2019s taking back, too. In this case my misspent youth.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s to reclaiming the joy of Christmas \u2013 and figuring out where I stashed the duct tape. I\u2019ve got those deer antlers somewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here we are, parked at the start of a holiday season.
\nThat said, you can basically put the entire human species into one of two camps:
\n\u2022 Those who started shopping for presents the day after last Christmas; and
\n\u2022 Those who will start shopping for presents by Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20238"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}