The Scrooge Thread

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Venting your irritation over seasonal annoyances</p>

<p>AND</p>

<p>Expressing new-found delight over something that thrills you about the holidays!</p>

<p>Today I received a crunchy-sounding evelope in the mail. Intrigued, I opened it while eating lunch at home and discovered inside a delightful Christmas card with…that awful fine glitter. UGH! Now it’s everywhere, including on my sandwich!!</p>

<p>At the dollar store, I found lots of goodies, including Nestle turtles and Lindt truffles for $1.00! (though most things are now $1.29)</p>

<p>PS: Hallmark moments and more profound comments are welcomed too. I was just too hungry to think of those right now!</p>

2

<p>I hate glitter! We had a couple of families over yesterday, and one of the little girls was wearing a glittery dress (not made of metallic fabric, but glitter apparently glued to the fabric). Well, the glitter didn’t all stick to the dress, and now it is all over my living room and family room. If I had noticed in time, I would have discreetly tried to keep her in wooden chairs. How do you get that stuff out of upholstery and carpet?</p>

<p>The nice part of the season - this time of year in Germany is wonderful! Christmas markets, gluhwein. dampfnudeln, gluhwein, reibekuchen, gluhwein…the new thing the last few years is a mulled white wine, and it is really good (we live in riesling country). I don’t know how my collection of Christmas market gluhwein mugs got so big!</p>

3

<p>Hosted an ornament exchange/lunch the other day. For atmosphere, I put the tree and lights up, (no ornaments) and some of the santas, nativity set, holiday books, etc. Everyone had a great time, house looks festive (although nowhere near everything is decorated, yet.) </p>

<p>I am happy the house looks Christmasy, the guests had a great time, the spiced cider makes the house smell nice, etc.</p>

<p>D walks in and says ‘you unpacked the nativity set without me?!!’
uh-oh</p>

<p>College son and I are doing the IM thing. "Mom, I just got back from C’s house. They’re putting up the tree and lights, you’re waiting til I get home to do that, right?’
uh-oh.</p>

<p>I don’t think I need to pack everything back up so it can be unpacked again on the 19th when S gets home, but we won’t be avoiding the rush of decorating the week before Christmas.</p>

4

<p>gfg, I saw some cards full of glitter in the store. The cards were beautiful, but I noticed that glitter was coming of the cards while they sat in the box. It was even on the store shelf. I left those cards, and bought some other ones. Glad I did not do that someone’s sandwich!</p>

5

<p>That’s so funny about the glitter because I love glitter! I just bought some glitter glue pens and intended to get some loose glitter as well. I thought it would be really fun for my younger boys to make some holiday cards–and now I can picture the looks on people’s faces when they open them and the glitter falls all over the carpet. O.K. We’ll just keep those at home! :)</p>

<p>I love the music and the decorations and the baking.</p>

<p>I dread telling my m-i-l that we’re not showing up on Christmas eve for the yearly family get together. We’ve been there every year since we married–24 years–and this year the kids really want to be home. My husband lost his job last year and now he has to travel for work so he’s only home on weekends–sometimes not even every weekend. Soon he could be sent to run a project in Atlanta or Louisiana–and we’re in Indiana. We need our family time–but I keep picturing her lunging across the table like the monster in alien when I give her the news. My husband called her about Thanksgiving and it didn’t go well, so I don’t think he should do it over the phone, and by the next time he’s home it will really be too close to Christmas to cancel. </p>

<p>I also hate their extended family gift exchanges where I have to buy presents for people that even my husband wouldn’t recognize on the street.</p>

6

<p>Christmas music…everywhere. I don’t mind the religious stuff (Angels we have heard, Gloria, even Carol of the Bells) or the old stuff (Merry Gentlemen, Joy to the World, etc) but you can keep anything written after about 1940. Jingle Bell Rock? That truly depressing Do They Know It’s Christmas? Little Drummer Boy, Winter Wonderland, Santa Baby, and anything that’s a cover you can keep. A local radio station starts playing this stuff in endless rotation from the week <em>before</em> Thanksgiving until New Year’s. It comes off my auto-set station for 6 weeks and usually it’s a reliable ‘go-to’ for me. </p>

<p>Grrrrr…</p>

<p>On the plus side, well we had a little snow, the new LED lights look fantastic and I can worry less about them catching on fire (I can’t believe my in-laws still use big-bulbs lights from 30+ years ago…you know, the ones with tin-toil around the base?), and I’m counting the days 'til my D comes back from school. Oh, and Mom sent fudge so you know life is good!</p>

7

<p>I used to love Christmas. But I am married to the grinch and the mother of grinch junior. I wish I had a daughter.</p>

<p>I used to decorate our family Christmas tree with homemade decorated gingerbread cookies that I spent a lot of time making (yes, decades before Martha Stewart I had a collection of cookie cutters in all kinds of shapes! :slight_smile: ), candy bars like little presents in shiny paper and ribbon, candy canes, and bags of gold chocolate coins. Almost everything edible.</p>

<p>I loved giving people well-chosen gifts that they would really love: preferably something they wouldn’t get for themselves that is a real treat, even if a small one. (I once gave my father a really great ripe French regional cheese. :slight_smile: )</p>

<p>I came from a family that tended to think this way, and moreover one that said that you should be grateful for ANYTHING someone was kind enough to give you. No lavish displays or pouting over presents that weren’t “good enough.”</p>

<p>My husband came from a family where you gave everyone a list of what you “needed” and they bought something from it and called it a Christmas present. And you had to make sure it wasn’t “too good.” So, for example, if a person said they “needed” a scarf, I might have been inclined to get them one that was merino wool on one side and silk on the other (like the one I gave H, the ingrate). He would be inclined to go to Penney’s and get something acrylic. Why? Because if someone else also got them a scarf, the one I gave them might be “better.” Huh?</p>

<p>And it wasn’t a question of money. I never spent a lot of money. They probably spent more than we did. </p>

<p>I used to make most of our Christmas presents. I made very special jams and things like that (Brandied Apricot Jam, Plum Rum Jam, Pickled Vidalia Onions, real aged booze-soaked English Christmas Puddings in a pudding basin, truffles, etc). For my inlaws, for example, I might buy a nice twig basket and a pretty tea towel, and pack them in it. I might include a special-shapes muffin pan for a BIL/SIL, or a little Biscuits and Scones cookbook. I would buy unfinished wood trays or paper mache boxes and paint and decoupage and stencil them and pack the stuff I made in that. </p>

<p>My husband’s response was to clip out an article from the WSJ about people who were “cutting back” on their Christmas spending and leave it on the kitchen table! Cutting back, I might add, to ten times as much money as we had EVER spent. This was his attitude when we had a 6-figure income. Now that we are considerably poorer, you can imagine.</p>

<p>Eventually I just got worn down. Nowadays I hardly even want to bother to put up a tree. Why bother, when almost every year I’m just alone with two men who don’t give a damn.</p>

<p>Oh, woe is me. Thank you for listening to my sad tale. What I should do is leave them here and go to someone else’s house for Christmas. :)</p>

8

<p>Consolation: your story brings back memories of my sisters and me growing up. We always made presents for each other and our parents and grandparents. I’ll always cherish the memory of the year my sister made me a homemade version of the game Battleship. For weeks I watched her glue together flat toothpicks and paint them with red nailpolish to make the pegs and had no idea what on earth she was doing. We made Christmas trees out of Reader’s Digest magazines by folding the pages and then spray- painting them gold or green, we made pencil holders by wrapping yarn around mayonnaise jars, paperweights out of painted stones, jewelry trays out of fabric-covered egg cartons. We painted by number and gave the result, we created wreaths out of pine cones and sweet-gum balls, we made those candles that you used ice cubes and milk cartons to mold, we fashioned ornaments out of melted crayons. It was so much fun. When my older two kids were very young, we did some of that, but little by little materialistic busyness creeped in and the tradition died by the time my third came along. Now we do the list thing too. I hate it.</p>

9

<p>Consolation, I think all that you did is wonderful! And I think if you enjoy doing it you should continue in some way. I have guys too, and while they aren’t as bad as yours, alot of the things I do isn’t really appreciated. What I started doing a few years ago was to decorate and bake my heart out, then I have a Christmas luncheon for some of my GIRL friends, we have a small gift exhange and eat drink (a little) and spend the afternoon having a ball. And they LOVE what I do.</p>

10

<p>Note to self: Put name on Consolation’s Christmas list!</p>

11

<p>Consolation; I know what you mean. I also loved everything about Christmas and though my Grinch does not complain about the presents, he does complain about putting up the lights around the yard and about the house being full of people. A combination of hearing the moans and groans every year for the last 20, almost being an empty nester and perimenopause has taken the glitter off Christmas for me too…its sad but I’m almost too sad to be sad about it.</p>

12

<p>^^To OP:
I have a DIL who used to do that. One time a S was lying on the couch when he opened a birthday card from her and the glitter fell all over his face and, of course, the couch. I “retaliated” a bit…sent a package for my GS with plastic hole punchy type things (I’m not mean enough for glitter for a baby) and she has doesn’t used glitter for us since then.</p>

13

<p>Consolation: I know exactly how you feel. My husband came from a family like that. We’ve been married for 29 years and I still can’t understand it. Luckily, my kids take after me. My husband and his sister call each other up, tell each other what they want for christmas, and each buys a gift for themselves from the other. That is NOT a gift!!!</p>

<p>He sends me emails telling me what he wants for christmas with a link. This year he wants a gift certificate to a hobby store. That is NOT a gift from a wife. He can spend all he wants there, he doesn’t need my money or my permission.</p>

<p>Last year I thought of something he would love to have, that he did not think to get for himself. I was searching for it on Ebay because it was a hard to find item. He noticed it on my watch list, not realizing it wasn’t an advert, and emailed the kids telling them he wanted it, with a link. They, of course, bought it spending way more than I would have. </p>

<p>They take all the fun out of shopping.</p>

14

<p>Consolation: I am pretty much in the same situation. I came from a family where the best part of Christmas was watching each other open the presents we had for each other. Husband came from a family where you got what you needed. One present each. My solution is that I have done my family style Christmas with my family and his style with his. With our family I do what I want and he does what he wants. 25 years in and he has come around to my side of things way (well, pretty much). While he still has his moments of wanting to ditch the fuss of making cookies for all my sisters, brothers, nieces, etc. he loves when he gets a hand knit scarf AND a cool CD AND a new garden tool AND… Our kids have picked up on this dichotomy and have done the same thing – My family gets mix tapes and home made toffee, his mother gets a joint gift to Heifer international. This is really a reflection of each family’s personality and my kids have come to understand that joy is lifestyle.</p>

15

<p>My husband used to buy something for himself AFTER I had already done so…or buy something for our daughter that I wanted to wait for either her birthday or Christmas.
Always, upstaging me where she is concerned.</p>

<p>I have never been one to make any kind of list of things I want, and I feel a little sorry for anyone that asks me what I want… I would rather be surprised.</p>

16

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<p>Come on over! We try to stay sensible about Christmas, and have cut back on gift-giving among adult siblings, but that’s not what Christmas is all about anyway. Although I have to say almost all the Christmas trimming & gifting is up to me. For many years H managed to travel a fair amount during December – so as far as he was concerned, there really was a Santa Claus, because Christmas just happened.</p>