December is here, which means Christmas is only 25 days away. Now that we are past Thanksgiving and have survived Black Friday, here are 25 thoughts (what a random number, huh?) I have on the wonderful holiday season.
1) Shopping should be fun for us as we buy gifts for the people we love or care for, but often times it can be stressful instead. My wife and I usually finish Christmas shopping way early (one year we were done in October!), but this year we fell behind. We finished buying gifts for each other, but we had a long way to go for the rest of the family prior to Black Friday. Thankfully my wife was able to get pretty much the rest of what we needed that day. Now my wallet has all of December to recover.
2) I read interesting reports on the sales figures of holiday shopping this year. Apparently Black Friday in-store retail sales were slightly down compared to last year (partially because deals weren't as good as last year, in my opinion), yet overall units sold at most retailers set new records for the week. This tells me a) more shoppers are buying online, and b) retailers are getting better about not cramming all the craziness that is Black Friday into one early-morning fracas. The downside to that is they are spreading the sales throughout the entire week to get consumers to go shopping on more days. Honestly, though, if this means they will do less special-openings on Thanksgiving Day, I'm okay with this. I know someone who doesn't seem to care about any of this....
3) And that someone is Amazon. The company set insane records not only on Black Friday, but on Cyber Monday, as well. One report I read stated that Amazon sold more than 180 million items on Monday alone and completely smothered the competition. That one-click buy option is awfully dangerous.
4) Speaking of week-long sales, Cyber Monday has turned into Cyber week, too, which is far better than its in-store counterpart. Some years, I get nearly all of my shopping done online, so knowing that Amazon has great deals for an entire week takes a little pressure off getting things done in one day.
5) I'm sure many people have handed out their Christmas wish list already. While it's ironic that our society invests in so many material things the same week that families gather together to chow down on turkey and say why they are thankful, Christmas lists are a good tool to use. Knowing that the gift you're buying for a person is valued and important is satisfying. Sure, it's cool to buy that surprise gift you know will be a hit even though they didn't ask for it -- actually, this can prove how thoughtful you are -- but giving a gift isn't about proving how great you are at giving gifts; rather, it's about making the other person feel special, loved, and happy. Of course, people having an appreciation for what they get no matter what is a lesson society tends to forget, so there's truly a fine line here.
6) Now that Thanksgiving is in the rear-view mirror, we can kick the Christmas season into full gear. Now. Not before, okay? Can we all quit pretending it's cool to decorate for Christmas on Halloween? If we displayed Christmas decorations all year, it would cease to be a special time of year. But, now that the holiday season is in full force....
7) Don't complain about listening to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" approximately 141,282 times this month. You be thankful every time you hear it, too.
8) Christmas season also means it's time to start drinking hot chocolate and eggnog! I love those drinks, so much so that it's probably a good thing eggnog isn't sold all year long. I don't even want to know what my cholesterol count would be.
9) One of the few dumb things about this time year, however, is going outside at 5:45 p.m. on Friday only for it to appear as if it's midnight. Seriously, it's ridiculous how dark it gets so early in the evening. Come to think of it, maybe that darkness is what exposes the high amount of sucky drivers on the road.
10) It's also annoying how cold it gets this time of year. We've already seen a couple strong snows, relatively speaking (I'm sure it would've been nothing for people in Minnesota), and it's just going to get colder and colder. As a homeowner, though, I have become ever so thankful for garages. No more scraping ice off windshields anymore!
11) The best way to combat the cold, of course, is using our fireplace. Last year we had issues with it, but this year it is working well! Of course, now I'm dreading next month's gas bill. Oh well, it's worth it.
12) My wife and I moved into our house last December, so we really didn't get to deck our halls or decorate nearly as much as we would've liked. This year, we bought a ton of new decorations and a tree for downstairs. She really made our house look like a Hallmark card.
13) Speaking of our home, as a first-year homeowner, hanging Christmas lights is pretty much the last annual chore I need to attempt for the first time. The ladder I have isn't quite tall enough to reach the very top of the roof, so I may need to climb the roof to finish hanging the lights because of how high it is. As the droid K-2SO in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," once said: "It's high. It's very high."
14) Speaking of Star Wars, this year is the first December I won't get to watch a new Star Wars movie since 2014. It's also sad because I don't get to see that meme of the husband counting down the days until a Star Wars release date on his calendar with his wife thinking he's counting down the days until Christmas. Priorities are important, you know.
15) Speaking of movies coming out in December, man are there still a lot of great flicks hitting the big screen before the end of the year. I haven't really cared much for the DC movies, but I read a review that described "Aquaman" as an underwater version of Star Wars, so now I'm all kinds of hyped for it. We also have an animated Spider-Man movie, the return of Mary Poppins, "Mortal Engines," and Will Farrell's iteration of the Sherlock Holmes character among several others. If anyone wants to buy me a Christmas gift, movie passes would be great. (*Sidebar: Why are Spider-Man and Ant-Man hyphenated while Aquaman, Superman and Batman are not? Is this another Marvel v. DC thing? Sheesh).
16) Speaking of Christmas movies, I may be a bit biased, but I feel like Christmas movies that came out in the 90s are far more enjoyable and rewatchable. Movies like "Home Alone," "Christmas Vacation," (actually released in 1989, but close enough), "The Santa Clause," and "Jingle All The Way" among many others all were quite impactful to pop culture. Movies released in the 2000s like "Elf" and Jim Carrey's "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" are fewer and further between.
17) Speaking of the Grinch, our church is in the middle of a series called "Grinches," which is about not letting certain people or situations steal your joy. How cool is that?
18) Speaking of stealing joy, I know planning for the holidays can be stressful for many families when it shouldn't have to be that way. My wife and I are fortunate enough to have her parents and my parents live nearby, but my sister and her husband live in Tulsa and have to drive both to Wichita and to Arkansas for their holiday visits. Hopefully everyone stays safe on their travels and sees everyone. But if, for some reason, you don't, hopefully you aren't made to feel unimportant. Sometimes things just don't work out the way we'd like them to.
19) I am extremely proud of my co-workers. In each of our buildings at work, donation trees were put up with papers hanging in the trees like ornaments that have a kid's name and age written on them. The idea is you take a child's name and buy age-appropriate toys to give them. In my building, practically every name has been taken off the tree already! So thoughtful and kind.
20) I'm also proud of our Bible Study group. I won't go into detail, but basically we're all pitching in to buy gifts for a family in great need. It's truly heart-warming and an honor to help out others in these kinds of situations.
21) Speaking of thoughtfulness, it totally would be considered selfless of me to ask for board games this Christmas so I can play more games with friends, right? Right?!? No? Is that not how it works? Oh well. I still want board games for Christmas.
22) One small tradition I created with my family (it's not an earth-shattering idea by any means) that we've done for a couple years now is gathering the six of us in the living, then making one person leave the room while the others coordinate who will buy what gifts for that person. It's an easy way to make sure we're all on the same page. Then when we're done, the first person comes in and the next person leaves the room.
23) My team at work is comprised of 10 women and two men (myself being one of them). Needless to say, buying a Secret Santa or White Elephant gift is more precarious for me than ever before. Thank God I have my wife to help me with that.
24) By now, you all have seen that commercial where the wife buys her husband nice matching watches (or whatever it is) for the both of them, right? Do you remember when the husband takes her outside for a surprise, too? He shows her a brand new red SUV and a brand new blue truck. The problem is she thinks the truck is for her as she says "I love it!" with a great big smile. Such a sweet commercial, right? WRONG. If I'm the guy, I'm telling her, "Uh, no. Screw that. I bought you the red one. You can take it or you get nothing!" (I probably just lost any ladies readership right there).
25) With that, I will say I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas season! Notice that I said "Christmas season" and not the lame, politically correct "Happy Holidays" phrase. Let's never forget what the true meaning of Christmas is!!