Thursday, November 18, 2010

Do Not Open Till December 25th

I don't care much for procrastination. I do the dishes right after dinner, do my homework one week before its due, and vacuum first thing every morning. That's why David and I are always done with our Christmas shopping super early.

Over the past few months we bought several gifts for our ladies here and there. An EasyBake oven, some board books for my bookworm Ava, this and that. We were planning to go Black Friday but impatience got the best of us. So we planned on going Saturday morning. Someone got impatient yesterday, since it was payday and money was burning a hole in his pocket, so we went last night. We accomplished most of our shopping, but not all. Due to time constraints, like the stores were closing because we went at nighttime cause someone just couldn't wait, I didn't spend nearly as much time at Target as I would've preferred. So now we have to go again. And again in December when we have more money.

Since our presents are bought ridiculously early, they spend a large amount of time under the tree. Collecting dust. The suspense builds. At least for our kids it does, cause David and I pick out our own presents. We're lame and cool like that. I blame my obsession with new jeans, because they require being tried on. And David likes to pick out his own Christmas Cowboys jersey every year. So the presents sit there. Santa makes an early stop to check us off his list, that's just one less thing he has to do on Christmas Eve.

We've always bought presents early. And always wrapped them and put them under the tree to wait for Christmas. Except that one time. The first year David and I were together we had large piles of presents for each other underneath our tree. It was my first parent-less, as in I was free from the tyranny of my parents Christmas rules about waiting, adult Christmas. We went all out. We both spent way too much money on each other and all of our gifts were a surprise. The suspense was killing us. So we caved.

Several days before Christmas we just decided Hey we're grown-ups! Who's gonna stop us from opening all of our presents right now? What harm will it do? It will be awesome! So we did it. And it was awesome. Loads of new gifts almost a week before Christmas. Why didn't we think of this earlier? We're gonna do this from now on!

The awesomeness was almost unbearable. I got a DVD player. This was like, 2001, so it was pretty cutting edge. We were awesome. No regrets. Till Christmas morning. Santa came early, which meant on Christmas morning we just sat around an empty tree, no presents to unwrap. It looked like the Grinch had already gotten there. No presents, no roast beast, nothing. It was infinitely depressing. Sure we had gotten presents, like a week ago. The novelty of the new stuff had already worn off. We were just adults, and the empty stockings and lack of presents were a big reminder of that.

After that we never opened presents early again. Opening them Christmas Eve night doesn't count as early, in case you were wondering. If you wanna feel like a kid again, you've gotta play by the same rules as kids. No peeking. You'd better leave cookies and milk out for Santa. He tends to get mad if you forget. And never, under any circumstances, open your presents the week before Christmas. Its just not the same.

4 comments:

Brittany said...

Oh no, what a sad Christmas with the gifts already opened! I could never do it! I'm so jealous that you're almost done shopping though.
Love your blog's look!

Rachel (Diary of a Recovering Chocoholic) said...

This will be my first "parentless" Christmas, but only by a few days. We'll still be honeymooning so no tree (I wonder if I could convince the hotel....) and our gifts? the trip itself (although I am hopeing to get a small silly token gift for Mike.

we hate you. love, us said...

I'm so impressed that you finish your shopping so early! I'm TERRIBLE at it. Every year I say I'm going to do better...and every year I fail.

Nikki Darlin' said...

Gosh I wish we got our shopping done that early! Lucky!
XOXO
Nikki Darlin'

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