christmas, shmishmas

I used to love Christmas. When the kids were little, so anxious for Christmas morning that they went to bed with their slippers on their feet, it was fun. Their excitement ripping off colored paper to reveal their deepest desires was positively contagious, not to mention rewarding. (Was it wrong to make sure their most hoped for present came from Mom and Dad? I admit it, I had a hard time letting the fat guy get all the credit.) Anyway, it's different now. Christmas morning comes, nobody wants to get up, and the stockings are filled with gift cards to I-Tunes and Chili's. We're lucky if we get the tree up before the relatives show up for dinner. It's all too much work and money for too little payoff. While it's nice not to have to run around like a crazy person trying to find the "hot" toy, I find myself secretly longing for a grandchild to put the fun back into Christmas. But with my two a long (I hope long) way away from providing me with one of those, I'll just have to settle for the next best thing. A quiet, uneventful Christmas surrounded by my amazing family and a nice glass (or two) of red wine. It could be worse.