Christmas is normally a wonderful time around our home. With everyone excited for Santa’s arrival, baking lots of cookies, glowing lights all over the house, preparing for our family to visit, and enjoying the fun associated with the holidays.
This year is different! I’ve found myself extremely stressed about everything. My anxiety is going haywire and I’m about to beat my head on the floor over holiday gifts. I’m finding myself looking for a stress relieving medication to help me deal. That seems so sad, this should be a fun and exciting time NOT a stress filled Xanax needed time of the year.
{What’s causing the stress}
This is the 1st year I’ve had to put myself on a budget for gifts. With Dan working in country this year, our funds are 75% less than normal. I don’t like feeling like I can’t get what I want and I especially don’t like being on a tight budget.
Dan and I agreed we would only spend $1500 for our kids Christmas. $300 per child x’s 5 kids is $1500. While $300 for a small child may work fine, it’s not much for a teenager. Perhaps my children have always been over spoiled and that’s why I’m having such a hard time with this.
With that said- I’ve had to do some massive hunting for items on the kids list. Several of the items were very hard to find because they were sold out EVERYWHERE. I’ve went three cities away trying to find these items, shopped about every large retailer online and, spent more time on the phone calling to check stock at every store half-way local to us. The Tablet Q wanted was gone everywhere except on eBay. The only issue is the sellers on eBay wanted $100 more than the stores cost. I just could not see spending more for the item and spent at least 20 hours on eBay making offers, bidding and checking for new listings. Finally yesterday my 100 calls a day paid off, when Wal-Mart (even with Wal-Mart loosing my business) in Fernandina, Fl had 2 in stock. As angry as I am with Wal-Mart right now, I had to cave and send daddy to get it before they were gone.
Aside from the gifts for our kids, I’m stressing over our parents visit. The house must be immaculate or my mother will have a heart-attack and I’ve got to figure out arrangements for 14 people. With 7 people in our home, it may be clean but it is always messy. Damn, Martha does not live here! I don’t have 10 hours a day to do nothing but follow kids around cleaning.
Last but not least- Desi has discovered there is no Santa and wanted to know why we lied about him! I teach my children not to lie, yet we lie all the time about Santa, the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. While we do it in good spirits, it is still a lie. So, I’ve had to explain why parents tell their children about Santa and why it’s ok to tell that little lie at the holidays.
After our little talk, she decided to tell Tela (6 yr old) the truth about Santa. I was not ready for her to know the truth, so it caused me to tell another lie about Santa and then a lie about why her sister would say such a thing! I feel horrible but I was not ready for my youngest daughter to know the truth and ruin her excitement about Santa’s visit.
What about you? Are you finding this Christmas to be stressful? Do you kids know the truth about Santa? And..do you feel bad for lying about him?
About Tara V
I always stress about Christmas. Hubby hasn’t gotten it through his thick head that the fact that he buys 80 lego sets between August and Christmas completely wrecks Christmas for me because then we have no money to buy anything else and can barely afford a Christmas tree, but it also means we miss out on all the sales so we end up spending more than if we had saved the money and planned. He’s totally getting coal this year.
To funny Cheryl,
Christmas is way to important to me. I really think it’s because I want to give my kids everything I did not have and Christmas is the perfect time to spoil them with an excuse.
why do people let the holidays stress them out… for me it’s a time of “fuck it i have no money NO ONE GETS SHIT THIS YEAR BUT I STILL LOVE YOU!” xD hehehe