Time to shake off the "Bah, Humbug" attitude
It's Christmas Eve and in an hour Rob and I will be visiting my parents along with my brother and his kids to have dinner together and open a few gifts. The gift side of things with my family has always been way toned down compared to other families I know. A box of home baked cookies, a flannel shirt or a pair of houseshoes are all fine and dandy as a present and if any one of us had enough money to buy someone a Lexus or a diamond necklace, you can bet we wouldn't dare do it as Christmas present. That would be totally unacceptable. I didn't realize how rare this attitude was until I got older and saw how stressed out my friends were over the whole Christmas shopping experience. Many of them felt they had to spend a set amount of money per person even if it meant running up so much credit card debt that it would take them the next year to pay it off. Some of them would scour all the stores in the area for days/weeks or even drive out of town in an effort to find some particular item that they just "had" to give. I had a taste of that kind of pressure when I was married to my ex-husband. I suppose I caused even further Christmas stress for my ex when I refused to go along with the game plan, but too bad. As a result, I'm usually pretty free of Christmas stress so I was a bit mystified by my humbug attitude this year.

It only took a couple of conversations with my co-workers yesterday and today to realize much of it comes from the work I do. The day to day interactions with customers who seem to get ruder and nastier this time of year, the fact that we are working instead of having any days off, plus it's the busiest time of the year so we are all overworked, well it definitely takes it's toll on the holiday spirit. But for tonight I will try to shake that off, enjoy the good food and company of my family and maybe feel a little bit of the Christmas spirit before I head back to work tomorrow.