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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (68782)	12/26/1999 11:41:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

I see you are using effective parenting methods which do not require spanking to make your point, X. Congratulations! I think we may go to Ireland next Christmas for several weeks, and have an experience to remember rather than a bunch of junk lying around. If not Ireland, then Santa Fe, New Mexico, which I understand is also stunning during the holidays. I was not big on Christmas at all, as the result of very bad Christmas memories from childhood. My husband, being Irish, is genetically hard-wired to think of Christmas as the most splendid part of the year, and somehow my daughter has inherited his love of the day. She is now old enough to do ALL of the decorations, and they were beautiful, and a lovely surprise when I came home from work one day. She also manages to keep her room reasonably neat for a teenager. We never buy decorations at all except the day after Christmas, so we have kept the cost under control. We struggled financially for quite a long time during the first part of our marriage; one year we were so broke that my husband chopped down a tree which was not even on our property so that our little girl would have something to enjoy. And since we started so late, there really is not a vulgar excess of ornaments yet. We could do with a tree skirt and some more lights, now that I think of it. The most miserable part of the day for me was the money really just squandered on gifts, and that is what I am going to try especially to change for next year. I already made the suggestion that everyone only get one gift, but a very special one. That did not go over very well, but I will continue to make it. My daughter did say that if the one special gift was a car for her, she could live with the idea. I do really love the time from Thanksgiving weekend until after New Year's Day (okay, sometimes it has been until March when we were very bad and lazy) when the house looks so happy and festive and red and green and every seemingly inanimate object winds up and dances or turns on and plays some sort of tune.