Virtually Smacking Myself over Christmas

"The Holidays." That's a phrase, a paragraph, perhaps a whole novel in itself. Lets look at it as a novel outline:

The premise: Children's excitement over opening presents, Santa's arrival and the break from school. Adults get twinges of pleasure when confronted with the nostalgia of those childlike feelings, and in most grown-ups cases, the joy of a break from work.

The Conflict: The children continue on in an oblivious(possible sugar-induced)blissful state of ignorance. The Adults on the other hand are attacked by an evil dark cloud bringing with it thoughts of "I can't believe i'm missing work to go shopping, i'm going to be so far behind when the holidays are over. I'm running out of money. What the heck to i get my father-in-law who has everything? We can't get little Anne that present without getting little Andy something of equal value. When am I ever going to have time to get all my baking done? The parking lot at every store is full! I spent 3 hours at the check-out to buy one bloody scarf!! What happened to the scotch-tape????

Climax: "THATS IT! I'm Cancelling Christmas!!!!!!" The sheer narcissism of thinking one individual can actually cancel Christmas gives our hero a new found strength. They shop, they wrap, they bake and they create, but most of all... they bitch about it every step of the way... to anyone that will listen. Until one day, the miracle of "readiness" sets in. A stranger asks them, "are you all ready for Christmas?" and with a moment of realization, the evil dark cloud dissipates and a feeling of calm comes over our hero.

Anti-Climax and Moral of the story: Christmas day arrives, the children are smiling from ear to ear with glee, the smell of peppermint and cinnamon fills the air and for a brief moment, through chaos and noise our hero realizes they are surrounded by those they love, and those who love them. Sure our hero would have preferred to hide under the covers to be woken up the day after New Years and skip the whole stress filled ritual, but that's not what Christmas is about.
For a short period of time during the year we are forced to focus all of our energy, money and time on the people we care about. Sure most of us may do that throughout the year as well, but this is the only time we are forced to take that action... in bulk form.

So maybe next year instead of letting the dark evil cloud of Holiday Despair rain it's ugly pessimism, stress and negativity down upon us, we can put our selfishness aside and say "Hey, i'm doing this for the people I love because I love them", regardless of if it's a bad time for us health-wise, money-wise or mentally.

As a victim of the evil cloud myself, I'm hoping I hold on to this lesson for next year... or win a trip to a far away land...