christmas/holiday spirit

I have a real hard time being in the christmas mood. I know its about family and i enjoy spending timw with my family but it seems like it has gone all main stream.
part of the problem is that my daughter is 6 and every christmas it seems like im not able to afford the things that she wants and deserves. maybe thats part of the problem. im not sure. just seems like as i get older i start to hate the holidays
When i was a kid you never herd anything about christmas until thanksgiving, now it seems like it starts around halloween. what the hell happened? shareholders? things used to be closed on christmas day and now you see stores open all or most of the day. what happened to spending time with family? when did the all mighty dollar take priority over family? places used to close or be closed on christmas eve, here at my work we were informed that its another work day. regular time, and open day after christmas.
my question is this, do you have the christmas/holiday spirit? why? why not?

 

@ralphie250, I agree with everything you're saying here about the spirit and meaning of the season being degraded by commercialism coming on earlier each year. Black Friday—now devolved into Thanksgiving Day—shopping disgusts me and always has, and I fear it's only going to get worse.

I find my own level of Christmas spirit dependent less on that and more on my overall emotional state, as well as the weather: cold and snow always helps, while gloomy and rainy, especially if warm, kills my Christmas spirit pretty quickly.

That being said, I'm not feeling it this year. I didn't bother decorating my house at all—while neat and organized, it's not even clean—and left most of my shopping until the very last minute. I got invited to a Christmas Eve dinner with some new-ish friends, and I'm probably looking forward to that more than anything. I'll be spending Christmas Day with my family at my sister's, which is fine, just not anything I'm getting super excited about.

Much of the lack of enthusiasm comes from a dip in my overall emotional state over the last few months. It sucks because I was all over Christmas last year, but I was also happier then in general. Hopefully with better times next year, my Christmas spirit will be in better shape by December as well.

That being said, bring on the snow!

 

never thougjht about the weather, that does make a differnce. forecast here for christmas day is low 35 high 51 with cloudy skies. snow would be better. agree bring on the snow

i decorated my house this year only because my daughter wanted to, if it hadnt been for that the lights would proablly still be in the closet in the basement.

emotional state for me on the holidays makes me depressed.

 

Very little for me, and it gets worse every year.

I've always viewed Xmas as being for children, and we never had any. Family gatherings are fine, but after a short time everybody has caught up on what others have been up to. In my family that usually means much more bad news than good news.

Ingratitude plays a role. When folks don't have much money, yet they make the effort to buy at least something for their grandkids, those grandkids should be thankful for receiving something. BTW I'm not talking about young kids with high expectations and no idea of financial realities, I'm talking about teenagers.

Maybe next year I'll volunteer at a shelter to see if I can do something for folks who could really use a boost, even if it's just morale.

 

never really thought about that

at lodge we do fruit baskets for widows and shut ins that helps sometimes

 

I'm not a Christian but here's my outsiders view:
There's a lovely Christian holiday called Christmas.......which has been completely subsumed by Shopmas.
Shopmas now goes from Halloween to December 25th and is a retail experience designed to maximize spending, while replacing the true message of the holiday with the idea that shopping is everything.
Shopmas also leads directly to idiots like Bill O'Reilly calling it a War on Christmas if the check out guy at WalMart doesn't say "Merry Christmas".

Christmas fascinates me.
Shopmas disgusts me.
The real war on Christmas is being fought by Shopmas and it's a complete slaughter.

 

Ralphie, your daughter is six. I'm pretty sure she is still young enough to be happy with whatever you two give her. You put out lights and decorations. Did that make her happy?
BTW, I will be working all day both christmas eve and christmas day. Please people, don't crash so I can have a low key day and get home on time for my family. Actually, I work Wednesday through Sunday.

 

What holiday? Haven't done any shopping yet, and my schedule for the 25th is a dayshift with a graveshift that evening. Took a dayshift for tomorrow when it was offered this morning. The past few years Christmas has been almost as big a non-event as my birthday.

 

yeah it made her happy

 

I'm not feeling Christmas spirit this year. I miss my family, I have the flu, my emotions are a roller coaster and I feel guilt for not being able to be all things to all people this year. I just want to cry. It feels like everyone is jumping my case because I don't feel physically or emotionally up to celebrating anything. I'm just a sad sad mess who is questioning her purpose in life at this point.

I can't wait to get to therapy next week and make some sense of what I'm feeling. All this crying has to stop.

 

Do people think you're Grinchy?

 

My ever-so-interesting schedule had me confused a bit today. Thought I was working a grave shift tonight, then I realised that today was Christmas eve and I had the easy 8 hour day. Tomorrow will be the fun day when I have the 8 hour day shift, 6 hours off, then a grave shift. Sounds like a better Christmas than last year at least.
on that note....my "holiday spirit" has still not found me yet. If that term means holiday pay then yes I have found it.

 

I like not having any requirements of us for Christmas. We simply tell family it's too expensive to travel this time of year and that the stress is overwhelming. They tend to shut up. Last night we had a lovely dinner at a local high-end restaurant and today we're going to have dinner at some friends' house. We exchanged gifts ourselves for the first time in several years... Mainly because the hubs found something he wanted to get for me and the holiday was the perfect excuse to splurge a little. I don't do gifts for anyone, typically. It's just an annoying waste. My spirit is going to kick in next week, when I buy extra pet food for the animal shelters and blankets for the people shelters for the next cold snap. Because it was 82* yesterday. I do love my friends' cards, though. I have grinchy friends, funny friends, creative friends and an ah-maaaayzing card from @Poetry.