Do the holidays stress you out?

No

Yes with horrible weather, tons of really bad drivers with zero thought on driving.
But less now that we have totally stopped buying crap for the adults in both families we just get stuff for the kids.

Yeah, the holidays definitely stress me out. Right now I am in graduate school (thankfully on break) but between that and working full-time, it is difficult to shop for presents without going when everyone else is. Fortunately, I was able to have a day off earlier this month during the week and I used that time to shop for the gifts I did not buy online and that helped eliminate some stress. It really helps me to get everything done as early as possible (which sometimes doesn’t work out) so that I can just focus on what makes the holidays special for myself.

This holiday is all about our dear Savior’s birth.
Those of us who have a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ don’t get into all the worldly materialism of Christmas.
We celebrate the most special birthday of all and it doesn’t
take presents and spending lots of money and stress to do that.

Nope. Used to, long ago. But I realized it was a chance to do something festive for others, but if anything was missing or done wrong, it would not be the end of anything.

I’m keeping things pretty simple. I had my good friend and another friend out for dinner the other night and am having my daughter over tomorrow night for our celebration. She is bringing steak dinners so I only need to have appetizers and goodies. What stresses me out are the people that insist on giving me gifts I do not want or need and have explicitly requested to not be given and they do anyway.

I JUST told someone, not a week ago, to not buy me anything, and what do they do? Show up with all sorts of crap and then go on and on about their gift giving in an annoying and self aggrandizing way. Gah! Then, another person actually had the gall when I told them I wasn’t getting them a gift to tell me that I can “just” give them a day of pet and house sitting instead. WTF!

Um no, what makes you think I am going to “give” you $100.00 worth of my services as a Christmas present I wasn’t planning on giving you to begin with! lol
The fucking audacity of some people! haha

@Coloma: Imagine being able to order up what they want to receive as a gift? Nuts.

@jca I know right? Cracked me up. I’d have been better off just giving them a fucking $5.00 mug with a packet of cocoa in it. lol

@MooCows For some yes, that would be true but for all of us non-believers it is also perfectly logical to not want to get caught up in obligatory giving. Giving and obligation are mutually exclusive.

I enjoy the winter holidays, but this year has more than a bit of a pall over it.

It’s not stress, just sadness.

@Seek: What are you sad about, if you don’t mind my asking?

@jca Her SIL is battling a cancer diagnosis recently.

@Seek Hang in there girlie, we love you!

Not one bit, it’s when my responsibility takes a hiatus and I can just spend time with family.

Yes, I can’t wait until they are over.

Not any more. Would like to feel guilty about throwing so much business to Amazon, but I just cannot.

Not really. I’ve got things to do, but we’ve pared it back so much if something didn’t get done, nobody would care much. It’s all about getting together and spending a day as a family now. We don’t have any ‘outsiders’ coming over, so we just share food, share some presents and share time. It’s a nice day.

Yep. Some years more so than others, this being one of them. It’s a ton of work and I was burnt out and extremely stressed before it even began, so I didn’t get off on the right foot to start with.

When I have to buy gifts they do. This year zero gifts so far.

Sometimes doing the family thing gets stressful, because my husband’s family is more and more trying for me. I’m not sure if it’s me, or them, or both that it’s worse now than 20 years ago. This year we won’t be with the family.