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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Your thoughts on the holidays...
I keep seeing all these news stories where everyone is complaining about being stressed about the holidays, getting overwhelmed and ending up disliking the whole thing.
I love the holidays, all parts from hosting gtgs and christmas dinner to the shopping and too much time with family (although if it was in laws it would be different).
With all the stories I'm starting to feel like a freak for enjoying it. Where do you fall in the spectrum?- from "stressed out and wish we'd just forget about the whole thing" to "I relish the season and any and every part of it."
-Clare
Re: Your thoughts on the holidays...
I am the biggest Christmas freak ever, but get stressed when it comes to the gift thing. We have so many people to buy for that even buying everyone cheap, crappy stuff still is a financial strain. So I feel bad about the gifts I am giving along with my ruined budget.
I suggest every year we do a gift-less Christmas since everyone complains about the same thing, but it has yet to happen.
The face of Kitty-Hate
I love Christmas more especially since having Tyler but do agree that I get stressed with our budget and buying gifts. This year my sister, aunt, cousin and Tyler decided instead of buying gifts for each other we went to do something together as a family. This year we went to Santa's Wonderland and next year we are going to go do The Polar Express train.
I absolutely love it. I have a fantastic family, and being able to be around them and just "be" is so wonderful.
The work part of the holidays is stressful, and I don't get much sleep... But once it's all done, it's worth it.
As far as stressing about the budget, we try and keep it simple where all the grow ups are concerned. For the most part, we just want the kids to have a good time, and gather with delicious food : )
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I enjoy the holidays, and I enjoy it even more now that I have kids. G is getting to the age where he is understanding more, and it's fun to watch him take it all in. We generally don't go crazy on gifts for anyone (except our own kids). DH and I generally don't really get each other anything more than stocking stuffer type things, so I don't even feel pressured there.
Family stresses me out. We have lots of segments of family that don't interact (mom's sisters, dad etc) so I feel a whole lot of pressure to visit and see everyone and it never seems to be enough, despite everyone's claims of not wanting to put pressure on us. That's the worst part of the holidays for me. I hope that it will get better next year when we live someplace where it's possible for us to host.
I love the holiday season, and try to take steps to avoid the stressed out, overwhemled feeling. I get most shopping done by early December if possible, b/c I hate the increasing crowds at stores. The last 2-3 years I've done a "theme" for the young cousins so everyone gets something in the same category, books, pjs, etc, which makes shopping alot less stressful for me. I used to stress myself with baking for friends/neighbors, but I neither enjoyed it, nor was I very good at it, so I cut that out too. I try to mainly focus on DS enjoying himself, enjoying our time with family and friends on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and remembering what the holiday is really about.
The only thing that stresses me out is gift buying. It's not the budget, it's just that I SUCK at picking out gifts for people. Lately it's not Christmas if I don't cry at least once over the whole process.
I don't even have the first idea of what to get my parents, and we're not seeing them, so I need to do something fast and get it sent yesterday.
There will be some stress associated with the fact that I'm pretty much responsible for christmas dinner. I wanted rrr to start talking to his dad about it last week, but instead last night it was like I had a gun pointed to my head while trying to come up with ideas for what to make during their standard sunday night 10 minute phone call.
Then FIL said something about picking up a "pee-can pie" and I completely lost my concentration.
I am kind of in the middle. I love giving things to my family and friends. Means the world to me to do that. What really stresses me out is that others (aka family) EXPECT me to be all jovial and happy and my happy ass over at my brothers at 6 am to watch kids open their gifts. Just because I am single, and not by choice, I am not going to change and get up at some ungodly hour to drive 45 mins to watch the kids destroy presents at 6 am. I don't ask them to wait for me; never have and never will.
and there is still some lingering grief. Even more so this year. I have finally accepted that my IL's have finally pushed me out of the family. So evident in FB pictures when you see the stockings on the fireplace and you see your Late husbands stocking, your late BIL's stocking, your Late BIL's wife's stocking, the grandkids and your sil's stocking, but not your own. I guess when you don't produce grandkids, you are no longer worthy of the last name you carry.
***.. now i am depressed.
I used to love it. Now it's just stress and a crappy time.
We have a really tiny family. But my mom is just hard to deal with. My parents have been divorced for 30+ years but you'd think it happened recently. Even when everything goes fine having them in the same room, I'm a bundle of stress just from living through it and trying to make everything smooth.
DH is helpful, but somewhat clueless when it comes to social stuff, so he's no help there. And if he gets pissed he just shuts down.
And there is no relaxing time for me. My mom comes tomorrow and stays until the 26th. My MIL comes on Christmas day and stays for 2 weeks. We tried to go on a date tonight and the freaking movie theater was closed! So we went shopping instead because we couldn't think of anything else to do which is totally pathetic. We have ZERO holiday parties to go to. My house is a wreck,....ARGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Bah humbug.
i absolutely love Christmas! i get stressed out about picking the right gifts and making sure everyone is happy, but i love it. i never want it to go too fast!
someone making small talk in an elevator today me he can't wait for christmas to come and go already. it made me sad for him.
oh HELLLL no. if kids wake up before the sun and want to do gifts that's fine, but you shouldn't be expected to show up that early too. that is insane.
i'm sorry you are feeling edged out, honey. i don't know what to tell you other than the good old "you is kind, you is smart, you is important". because you are. i would imagine it's just really not something they're sure how to deal with either. i know we always say things happen for a reason, but it's tough to swallow that and skip along your merry way when you're sad. big hugs to you.
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thank you K... I appreciate it. I keep on trucking along and moving forward. And I remember that I have a lot of friends to offer me support and send me some awesome photo Christmas Cards.
Big hugs, ST. The holidays can definitely be rough. Hang in there and know there is a community of ladies on here that love you and are sending you good thoughts.
I like the holidays, but I am sick of traveling. Every year we are visiting one family for Thanksgiving, and one for Christmas. We are rarely at home for the holidays. But that will change next year, and I'm looking forward to it.
The kicker is that my dad was born on Christmas Day, so I have to really stretch my creativity when figuring out TWO gifts for a man that doesn't want anything.
Click it if you can't say it!
lol, instead of stressing about trying to get the family together for pics this year, i just asked jack to pull his favorite photobooth pics for me. he did not disappoint!
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Like others have said, I love the holidays, even more so now that my child is old enough to appreciate & enjoy it. I love taking her to do Christmasy things like Dickins on the Strand, Festival of Lights, Nutcracker ballet, Christmas Train, Polar Express, live nativity, ice skating, making gingerbread houses....even just simply driving around looking at Christmas lights...I love it all!
I don't get stressed out at all. In fact, I was just thinking earlier how I haven't even run across any "Scrooges" really even this entire season out & about. Everybody at stores has been super sweet, there havent really even been crazy lines or horrible traffic, at least that I've run across.
Maybe it's partly because we don't have a huge family to shop for AND because we do most of our shopping online, but even buying gifts hasn't been at all stressful.
And I enjoy entertaining so I don't find that stressful in the slightest. I just do what works for me & my budget and I don't worry about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses.
And luckily I don't have too much family drama I have to worry about...I simply surround myself with the people I want to be around and simply avoid those I DON'T want to be around and all works out quite well.
I love Christmas, but I'm not really feeling it this year. That's indicative of my general mood lately though & not just the Christmas season. I don't feel stressed about it at all. I don't think I could muster up the energy to care enough to stress about it.
I usually love all things holidays. The shopping, wrapping, baking, parties...all of it.
This year I've been off. I just haven't felt very Christmas-like. I know it is because last week I spent the week away from home, in a hotel for a work training class. I didn't want to go and I missed being home. The week before was nuts getting ready for the class and I dreaded it so much, if put me in a funk. This week is much better and I'm trying to make the most of a shortened holiday season.
It would also help if the weather would stay cool. :-/
I go back and forth ....
On the one hand, I love all of this:
And, of course, going to see Santa. I also enjoy all of the fun activities at their preschool/school....programs, parties, etc.
On the other hand, the family stuff is driving me nuts and sucks out some of the enjoyment. My family is uber-frugal, always crying "poor" this time of year to get out of having to buy or send gifts. My own mom said she was going to send things to the kids unwrapped b/c she didn't have the money (read: didn't want to spend it or be bothered with wrapping) on wrapping paper. Ugh, there's so much more to this than just the wrapping....I guess I'm venting. Then there's DH's family. They actually ARE in very tight financial circumstances, but still tend to be too-generous with gifts. We tell them year after year not to buy for DH or me, just get something small for the kids, but SIL complains that she and her DH would get "ripped off" on gifts if none of us buy for the adults. And then there's the matter that DH's family, in spite of their money concerns, go to the opposite extreme as my family.....it's obscene the number of gifts!! It becomes a stress point between DH and I over the excessive cost and absurdity of it as he buys as much as they do.
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This sounds like my MIL. We won't probably won't even get a phone call. She either doesn't call, or makes plans so last minute we can't make it. We got 4 hours notice for Thanksgiving, which she choose to host the Tuesday night before. Then she gets very put out that we didn't make it. Umm give us more than 4 hours notice and we'd come.
I normally love this time of year, but this year has been hard on me. I think it stems from our issues TTC. Last year, at this time, I was confident we'd have a baby in the house or at least be pregnant. Not so much. Tack on turning 35 next week, and I just feel blah about the whole thing. I'm going through the motions, but this time it's taking a lot of effort.
Both of our families live in town and it gets increasingly harder to plan time with each of them. Things got changed up a bit and now the ILs are irked with me. Oh well.
I love, love, love Christmas. The entire holiday season puts me in a great mood. Even though as of right now I don't have a job after 1/31 which is going to be impossible on us financially - it just all seems ok because it's almost Christmas!
I've had a blast doing the Elf on a Shelf with Abbie this year and putting up lights and decorations and buying gifts, baking treats, I love it all.
Collin Thayne 10.11.2010
Strangely enough, this time of the year doesn't feel any different to me. We don't really do anything. I buy gifts for the kids online and then I'm done. We put up lights and a tree, but I still never feel very "festive". It goes up the weekend after Thanksgiving and down the weekend after Christmas. Just going through the motions. We see my family for Christmas... but they only live 1 hour away so that isn't anything out of the ordinary. My older son is a teenager (no longer believes in Santa) and doesn't really care about presents because he has everything under the sun already. DD is too young to realize what is going on... so she doesn't care either.
So... no stress, no big changes and no one really cares.
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I love it, too. Sometimes things w/ my family can get stressful, but this year everything went smoothly!
I don't get too caught up in all of the keeping up with the Joneses of the holidays, though. DH and I bought a DSLR and no more gifts for each other. One of my best friends called me last week almost in tears because all of the blogs she reads made her feel inferior for not being like Martha Stewart on crack, crafting, baking, entertaining, doing. I just prefer to enjoy myself and not bite off more than I shoujld.
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