Christmas Spirit...

Getting into the Christmas spirit is a tricky thing. Sometimes its as easy as a snap of the fingers (or the jingle of sleigh bells) but sometimes that spirit is just not so easy to capture.I remember when I was younger & I would just wait (for what seemed like forever) counting down until it was time to put up Christmas decorations - lights inside & out, the massive tree that would barely fit through the front door, arranging the figurines in the nativity set just so. My family would always go to a local Christmas tree farm to have our tree freshly cut. Since we had a vaulted ceiling in our living room our tree was usually between ten & twelve feet tall so at the farm we were usually the last to get off the wagon waaaaay in the back (where the trees were to big to fit in anyone else's house.) There was always the great debate whether to get hot chocolate or hot apple cider to keep you warm while our tree was getting the needles shaken out. Then it was the monumental task of getting the tree in the house, lit, & ornaments put on the tree in one day so Sunday could be spent concentrating on decorating the rest of the house.

I miss those days. It just isn't the same now. I know part of it is growing up. Everyone looses there ability to believe in the magic & the wonder of Christmas to some degree as we grow older. Now it seems more of a hassle. We have to carve time out of our busy schedules, try to fit time in to decorated the house & enjoy the lights & sounds & festivities of the season. I know I feel this way (or have in the past few years) because of working in retail. This will be my 8th holiday season working in retail, and every year I say this is going to be my last. We (like a lot of retailers started playing Christmas music November 1st. Yes, that's right. Hadn't even had time to recover from the Halloween party the night before & all the sudden Christmas is here smacking you in the face. Our Christmas display (trees, ornaments, decorations etc) in the store was up in September!!It is sad that I am so burned out & tired of Christmas by the time December actually gets here (the people, the music, the traffic every where) that it makes it difficult to enjoy the holiday season.

This year my family has decided on a scaled back version of Christmas - less gifts = more time. We still plan to spend Christmas morning together just as always. We still plan to have our Danish Kringle that we order each year from Wisconsin. We still still have a hunt for the pickle ornament on the tree. Maybe this year since we wont' have to focus so much of our time on shopping for gifts I can actually go back to enjoying the other sights & sounds of the season.

A girl can always dream, right?