I'm bonkers for Christmas, but I try to restrain myself and not do any decorating until after Thanksgiving. Although, I do start shopping pretty early. I'm probably start in the next few days, as I have a few people with December birthdays I need to get gifts for as well.
A real tree, of course! -it's one of our biggest industries here, right up there with bacon and wind-turbines! Though, I rarely have one myself; living alone and having neither room nor a lot of guests during x-mas will do that to you.
^You must have a lot more room than I do then. I seriously doubt I could find room for one I did put a couple of evergreens in pots in our concrete back yard though
I used to be really big on Christmas. Like, it was pretty much my job to decorate the Christmas tree and i would love doing it. Over the years though, my love of Christmas has become less and less. The family's grown, and most of my older cousins are married with their own kids so the Christmas parties of my youth are unfortunately a thing of the past. A few years ago, my family didn't even wait for me to get home from work and went ahead and decorated the tree without me. I was bummed about that. So, i'm pretty over Christmas. It's all about my birthday the week after.
I just created my Christmas music station on Pandora today! And I started looking at gifts for my family online. We had a fake tree from the time I was about 7 upwards. I really loved it because I was afraid of bugs and one time that we had a real tree it infested our house with ladybugs. So I was very glad to have a fake, "clean" one. It was especially fun to put it together and has become somewhat of a tradition in the family.
We're a little spoiled - we've got the big blue Spruces around here - but wrestling one into a pot isn't practical. I do have a litte Charlie Brown pine in a pot here but it wont' support much in the way of ornamentation. I'll have to content myself with festooning the outside trees with lights. That is fun too! But NOT before the day after Thanksgiving. I refuse.
During my childhood I was as happy about x-mas as any other child: it's all about the nice new toys you're getting But I grew up to love all of December once I was of (almost) legal drinking age. The x-mas brews are stronger and there's always a lot of things going on around town during December: concerts, parties, x-mas lunches.. what a great time of year to be young(ish)
Ditto. Christmas is two damn months away. It's October! It's still in the 60s and 70s outside where I am! We haven't even had Halloween yet! And Christmas pictures?! Ugh. My Christmas wish? That it'd go away! And, moreso, people think they need to honor it and celebrate it with decorations, corniness and with OMG!!! SHOPPING AND BARGINS!!!! Can we at least get past Thanksgiving (U.S.) before talking about fucking Christmas?!
Why don't all you spoilsports just stay out of the thread and leave it for those of us that happily would accept two x-masses per year? (not only directed at you Scrooge4747!) And, just for the record, you don't 'honor' midwinter, you celebrate it
Because we're still in this forum where we're seing a thread coutnindown to a holiday that's two freaking months away.
Isn't there a countdown to some imaginary event sometime in 2012 in another forum? The whole point of the celebration of mid-winter is counting days; by your reasoning we could skip x-mas altogether since it merely marks the start of the countdown to summer...
Meh. I don't care what people say. I start thinking about Christmas in October every year. I love giving gifts and sharing traditions, and decorating like an idiot. Some of my happiest childhood memories come from helping my Mom decorate or bake for Christmas. I will always remember the time she let me and my sister sleep in our sleeping bags under the tree. I remember looking up at the glowing lights and thinking it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Most of the time, I'm a jaded skeptic. But at Christmas, I'm a big sap. Plus, this year, I may actually have a kid to share it with.
One of my fondest annual Christmas traditions is enjoying the bitching that occurs at the sight of the first Christmas-related thread of the year. It's as seasonal as egg-nog and almost as deliciously intoxicating.
I have already bought about half of the Christmas presents I am going to buy. If I waited until December to think about Christmas shopping would be more stressful.
Sure, but you'll find that if you wait until Christmas Eve, the stress disappears almost completely due to accepting the merry inevitability of not finding anything, and simply having a drink or two instead. More cost-effective and certainly easier!
But I don't drink. When my children were young I used to buy gifts throughout the year especially from stores that had a July or September sale with lay-by until Christmas Eve.
Ugh! I actually got X-Mas Cards & Lights today!!! The Horror!!! I was shocked to see that crap out this early.