Saturday, December 3, 2011

Counteracting My Christmas Crabbiness

I'm sorry to say this .....I get a little crabby around Christmas. I'm one of those people, that love normal, everyday normal. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with friends and family but for some reason, I find the Christmas season a bit overwhelming....alright a lot overwhelming! I had lovely family Christmases growing up, as a child, so no difficult history to blame.

Of course, it goes without saying, that this Mrs. Scrooge is married to Mr. Christmas. Why is that? It must be the same phenomena that pairs morning people with night owls, messies with neat freaks, introverts with extroverts and on and on. 

So what do I do to counteract my crabby ways? In the practical realm, I've simplified. Name drawing for gifts, the less is more philosophy for decorating etc. Does that help? It does relieve some of the stress but, as I was telling  whining to Mr. Christmas this morning, I still have to work at fighting the general sense of..... what the bleep bleep, it's Christmas AGAIN!! 

I'm sure most of you will want to smack me when you hear that darling Mr. Christmas cooks the dinner and loves loves wrapping all the gifts.  Trust me, you are not alone in that...my friends have actually used the word spoiled in describing me, imagine that. He's singing in the kitchen as I write.


Trying to match Mr. Christmas's mood , off I went, to get some of my own Christmas cheer.
Hmm, is it hiding in this little mini Ginger Bread House...that  Santa does have a bit of an ominous look about him, don't you think?
Even a trip to my local quit shop didn't do the trick.....believe it  or not, that 's all I came home with.



One of the best ways to keep myself grounded during the holidays is to KEEP QUILTING. I used to put it all aside, during the season, resenting every every minute of it. Creating calms me! So instead of cleaning it all up I keep it going. The one thing I don't do, is have a lot of projects with deadlines.....there might be a few small ones at most.
I want my studio to be a place of refuge  and creativity, not a hotbed of stress.

In the calm of my studio....I reflect on all wonderful things in my life. At the top of the list are my two adorable granddaughters and my little grandson, due this coming spring. I pray, that rather than turning into a cranky mess, I can embrace the goodness of God's love, this Christmas season. 


P.S He's still singing in the background....off key I might add. I just might have go over and smack him...whoops sorry about that, old habits die hard.

25 comments:

  1. Geezzz...it's SO nice to hear someone else feels the same way! I hate that we feel obligated to BUY for folks on this day. I tell my kids I want to buy them dinners, do things with the grand kids the rest of the year...not just because it's Christmas Day...The mystery and fun of Christmas does subside when you become an adult.

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  2. I pretty much agree with everything you said. I like to be able to create too and definitely don't like stressful Christmas gift deadlines.
    I don't really like to decorate either. It's a chore and I usually can't wait to take it down.
    I've found myself having a bit of an urge to decorate this though. I need cheering up.

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  3. I agree with all three of you! Especially the decorating. I keep telling DH that if he wants MORE then he should help, but it doesn't happen, so he has to keep quiet about the less is more attitude that I have.

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  4. I am almost falling off my chair laughing! I thought I was one of the only women that felt this way too! I love my boring (not to me) routine of every day life, time to sew and do what keeps me centered. I have simplified as well, it's a lot easier to put it all away the day after Christmas.....yes I can't get that stuff put away fast enough!

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  5. WOW...ok, I'm wishing Mr. Christmas had written the blog I was reading. So far you are all a good dose of depressing. I'm going to move on now cause I love Christmas...all year long. The older I get the more I enjoy it. It's simply a frame of mind. Tell Mr. Christmas Merry Christmas! :-)

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  6. Sorry to say this, but I'm with you :(

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  7. oh I had to laugh, have you ever seen Grumpy Old Women at Christ,mas on You Tube? it's some actresses that give their opinion of Christmas, so funny. Hope you enjoy your Christmas, Im sure Mr Christmas is going to!

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  8. I more or less agree with you! I am not married to a Mr. Christmas, but my oldest son is a Mr. Christmas! How he got to be that way living in our "minimal holiday" house I'll never know. I love doing the big dinner or going to someone else's if we are doing that but the gift business and decorating so much and all of it just got to be more stress than fun. I had wonderful holidays as a girl and I think it is because we always spent them with my Maternal Grandparents and my Gram was a minimalist as well, except for the meal!

    If people just let me be me and don't look down their nose at me for being someone who doesn't go whole hog then I really do enjoy the season. I think some people are just "Holiday" people and some aren't. :)

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  9. ME TOO! I can hardly wait until January when I can hole up in my studio and create to my hearts content. Bah! Humbug!

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  10. The older I get the more it seems the lead in to Christmas gets earlier and earlier (decorations etc start appearing in the shops end October) so that by the time Christmas does actually arrive I've kind of lost the momentum a bit. Glad I'm not the only one!

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  11. I'm torn I love Christmas but hate the frickin decorating!

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  12. I'm so glad I'm not the only one to wobble at Christmas - you described my symptoms exactly ! My Mr Christmas, however does NOT cook ! That I don't mind though, I'm egotistical enough to think I do that bit best !!!!!! Let's keep calm and quilting !

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  13. Oh brother, I'm with you!! If I could hibernate from the day before Thanksgiving until Jan 2nd, I'd be the first one in line! The problem with me though is that everything gets thrown on my shoulders and the expectations are amazing.........ugh, is what I say, but yet, I do it every year. Call me crazy!

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  14. Thank you. I absolutely HATE Christmas and it is so good to be able to say it to someone else who gets it. Just a few more weeks now so I'm holding on to my sanity with a firm grip. What cannot be over come must be endured.

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  15. You are too funny! I'm a Christmas minimalist too. I like some decorating and some baking, but I try to stop before it becomes too stressful :) Hang in there!

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  16. It's so validating to read that I'm not alone in my 'scrooginess'...LOL Every year it gets harder to pull out the paraphernalia and as the family becomes more and more extended, ideas for gifting gets more difficult (not to mention the financial aspect). My DH is definitely NOT a Mr. Christmas...in fact he would happily ignore the whole thing...in fact he does!

    Thanks for this chance to vent, and mostly,
    THANK YOU for your beautiful blog! I enjoy it so much!

    Cherie Brown

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  17. I thought I was the only Scrooge!! My DH and I are retired and don't have any grandchildren so the Christmas holiday is almost non-existent. I'm scheduled for some surgery on the 12th so I didn't even bother with decorating this year. DH was never too excited about the whole Christmas hoopla...even when the kids were little. I can't understand that because he was one of five growing up and his parents had the typical Christmas decorating, etc. I was an only child so Christmas for me was a BIG deal. Now that I'm older...I don't really care. I celebrate His birth in my own way but I don't go in for all the commercialism.

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  18. So nice to know I'm not the only one that struggles this time of year. Mr. Christmas says thanks to the one person that wished him Merry Christmas....I wouldn't trade him in for a scrooge any day of the year, off key singing an all.

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  19. I am still laughing. That is the best "christmas" post ever. Thanks for making the rest of us feel normal. You are just the best scrooge ever.

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  20. Oh thank you for the great chuckle! I like Christmas to a point, a very small point. Merry Christmas! ;)

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  21. And here I was thinking I was the only one who dislikes all the hustle and bustle of christmas!
    This year my DH has booked a restaurant for christmas dinner and that sounds great! No dishes, no mess, no stress and plenty of time to quilt! yahoo this might be the best christmas ever!

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  22. Thank you all for validating my feelings about Christmas time. Add to this a birthday and a wedding anniversay and this is just too much for me to cope with in one month. I am so glad to see I am not alone: this is actually cheering me up!
    Would love a DH that does all that yours does!!!
    Annick

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  23. Wow! So this is where all the normal people gather! Really, I have always felt so alone with how I feel about Christmas. I've always wondered too where my negative feelings come from. There's no explanation. My Christmas spirit comes after Christmas and then I think, ya, this is fun. Next year I'll be happier earlier. But that never happens. I have my 3 girls arriving in 2 days and what am I doing, reading old posts on a lovely blog that I found. I'm so bad. But thank you for all sharing!

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  24. I realize that this is an older post, but I just found it so I had to chime in with a HEAR HEAR! I truly dislike Christmas and all the hoopla as well. I'm not religious, but I think if I was I'd hate all the crass commercialism even more. I do decorate a small Christmas tree for the grandchildren, but that's it! I had great Christmases as a child and when my own kids were small, but I'm just so over it! I'm retired now but what I REALLY used to detest were things like secret santas and cubicle-decorating contests at work. If you didn't participate you were ostracised and people thought you were weird.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for sharing....every year I want to feel different, but it never seems to happen.

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Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to comment. I try to respond to all of your wonderful comments....if you are not getting any response from me it's because you are set up as a no-reply blogger. In order to receive a response you can change your status in your blogger profile. I'm no longer accepting anonymous comments.

Thanks again for all your wonderful comments
Marianne

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