5 Years To Life...: The Perfect Christmas

When society thinks of the perfect Christmas, they usually think of freshly fallen snow, the house smelling like a bakery, family and friends gathering peacefully, and everything just falling into place for a perfect holiday season. Well, if anyone has actually had this kind of “Perfect Christmas”-they are a rare breed of human. My Christmas season has not been “perfect”, but it has been pretty damn close!

Normally I go out Black Friday shopping, or as it is now “Black Thanksgiving Night Shopping”-which I absolutely hate that Americans ACTUALLY went out and supported this stupid new tradition, it’s called Thanksgiving…Be Thankful for what you have, and spend time with your family!!! I would think stores could wait a few more hours before opening their doors.-Anyway while I’m shopping, I usually purchase a lot for myself, and little or nothing for anyone else. Definitely not a good start to the holiday spirit!

The weekend after Turkey Day my family usually puts up our Christmas Tree and decorate the house with other lovely decorations. This usually consists of the kids decorating the tree with our ten thousand ornaments and then mom goes through and “improves the look”. Basically she moves all the ornaments around so all the hard work her three children just completed, is erased, forever. Anywhere between 3 -9 ornaments get broken during this process, and it never fails that somewhere between the box and the tree -some lights stop working and we have to redo the whole thing! It always looks good in the end though!

Somewhere around the 15^th of December, I realize how close Christmas really is and decide it’s time to get in the Christmas Mood. I turn on ABC Family and hope their “25 Days of Christmas” has a movie I actually like such as “Polar Express”, “Christmas Vacation”, “Elf” or a few others and hope it’s not the “Disney/Pixar Short Films” or something like that….that puts me in a confused mood vs. the Christmas mood…because since when does ABC Fam. Play Disney/Pixar stuff….seems a little crazy to me. Any way I watch a Movie and eventually start forcing myself to listen to Christmas Music. I go shopping (normally never purchase any presents until about December 23) and look at Christmas Lights on random houses in random places.

On December 23 every year I have a panic attack. I realize I have purchased no gifts yet, have not baked any cookies, have not done any Christmas Caroling (everyone is thankful for that one), and have not even thought about wrapping gifts yet. So in a Frenzy I go purchase everyone’s gifts…usually everyone gets a gift card, or I make it really easy and just give cash because I am the worst gift giver in the world! I rush home to start baking cookies and help make appetizers for the family get together on Christmas Eve. My cookies never, EVER turn out how they are supposed to. I end up scraping the cookies off the pan using a LOT of elbow grease because the cookies are black and stuck to the cookie sheet. I have no idea why this happens, because even though it’s hard to believe-I’m actually a really good cook. I guess it’s the simple things….like cookies…that I can’t cook! Throw a 4-course meal at me and BAM! Delicious…cookies, nope, can’t do it! By this time of the night, I’m too tired to even carry the gifts(aka gift cards in my purse) in from my car and decide I’m going to wait to wrap presents the next morning and normally start drinking some….ok a lot.

By the time I wake up on Christmas Eve I have little to no time to shower, cake on my makeup, do my hair, wrap presents, cook food, and start drinking with enough time to get a slight buzz on before family comes over. Somehow, it all works out and Family comes over and before we know it…we are down six bottles of wine, and $5 worth of quarters! My family does a “rob your neighbor” game instead of exchanging gifts. Some of the better gifts that were robbed this year were a back scratcher, deck of cards, soap, batteries, and a coffee mug. I received none of the above, but instead ended up with cheap lip gloss, shoe polish, Hershey kisses and a Tweety Bird wash cloth. AWESOME! But nothing beats the “Gag Gift” I was the winner of at the other family Christmas….A Framed Holiday Picture of My Cousin and His Cat! Next to my uncle getting the movie “BrokeBack Mountain”, I got the best gift of Christmas!

Christmas with my friends and family may never be perfect, but it’s always interesting! One year the cops even showed up…Twice! I wouldn't trade my family or how we spend the holidays for anything!

I hope your Christmas is just as fantastic as mine always is! Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I’m fairly certain you celebrate something so here’s to you!!!

Love, Lauren J

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