Christmas Family

I've decided to write a spoof about Christmas time, the observations I've made. Below is the story of my "family" I've created....

Christmas is fast approaching. Do I have the right gift for Aunt Edna? Gasp, of course I don't! I've been looking since Dec 26th of LAST year and I've yet to find it! You know how she is, insisting that she have exactly what she wants but refusing to tell you what that is. And if you screw it up she emails the whole family behind your back about how selfish you are.

We also have fifteen places to go and we CANNOT celebrate any time other than Christmas Day because that would just be sac-religious; should I inform all these people getting drunk isn't a religion? Guilt is apparently a religion in my husband's family. They start in July talking about what time we are to arrive at their house and what time we are allowed to leave; trying to explain that I'm not an orphan is not helping.

The kids have announced they no longer want to celebrate Christmas. The oldest is mad because everyone refuses to give her just money, the youngest had a brief meltdown because her great grandpa informed her Santa isn't real. I informed her that her great grandpa is grouchy and old and no longer makes the nice list. The other two kids are fighting over who gets to sit in the front part of the minivan, what they don't realize is you won't be able to see them by the end of the day because of all the gifts.

Gifts. They seem to be the main focus of Christmas. My husband and I just got married over the summer and we want Jesus to be the main focus. His mom said "ok, then I'll not buy gifts I'll just buy you a 'smile Jesus loves you sticker'", my response...sweet, we need one of those. I thought the children were going to strangle me. My side of the family is no better. My cousin who we haven't seen in 12 years has decided to come celebrate with us, which is fine except the reason he hasn't come is because he steals from us...large items like our tv. But instead of confronting him about it, we just smiled and said Merry Christmas then decided to lie the next year and tell him we weren't having a gathering. Facebook ruined it for us this year because my sister posted "can't wait to see what I get from Mom and Dad at our Christmas gathering". So now I have to go to my parents house and help them hide the valuables before Christmas Day. I've considered explaining we aren't helping out Timmy by ignoring his problems, in fact we're enabling him, but I knew THAT would not go over well. We prefer to sit on top of the elephant in the room.

By the time the 26th comes we'll have traveled 902 miles, said Merry Christmas 1200 times, gained 7 pounds, accumulated 1 ton of things we really don't need and will be broken/thrown away within a month, my husband and I will have "stopped speaking" roughly 7 times, we'll be in debt $10,000 and we'll have threaten to "give all your gifts to children who will appreciate them" at least 3 times.

But by golly we're going to do this Christmas thing because after all that's why Jesus died for us...to create more stress, more work, more tears, and more debt. Hallelujah praise God!


*I wrote this because we enter the holidays saying "I hate the holidays" or "I can't wait for Christmas to be over" and it makes me sad. Somewhere along the way we've forgotten why we have Christmas and bought into the lie that Christmas is about stuff and schedules not people and love; we also forgo any sense of boundaries.

The bottom line is Christ came to this Earth because He loves us that much, not because He felt we needed one more thing to do. We are alive because of Him, not for others.

Merry Christmas :)