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Tis the Season! Warning: Karma Comes Year Around

I admit I am less than proficient in buying the perfect gift for people…especially for anyone outside of immediate circle. My family knows that I shop on Thanksgiving weekend, a traditional mad scramble to get it all done, handed down from my mother. I have a detailed list and a plan of attack. I will shop until I drop and get it all over in 72 hours, so I can enjoy the holiday season and not spend every weekend until Christmas shopping and wrapping for our huge family. Because let’s face it, I work 60 hours a week, and my idea of wrapping is breaking out the Sunday comics or better yet let me use the bike size Christmas sack and shove their haul all into one compact presentation. I mean come on, it all ends up in the landfill anyhow. Do you realize how much $$ is wasted on wrapping paper, boxes and bows? My family alone gives the 3M company their Christmas bonus via our tape consumption.

My husband and I have been married for quite a few years now. But, the first four years of our marriage I spent stressed out driven by the order to have the same number of gifts for each child with the same amount spent on each. Christmas isn’t about the number of gifts under the tree and it isn’t about the cost, but to my husband he wanted equality. Please do not get me wrong, it is not fair to go all Apple on one child and give the next a pocket acer. But, it was ridiculous task to think I could blend six kids Christmas wishes [Ages 21 to 8] into 12 equal gifts of cost. I spent more time making sure everyone was equal and accounted for that I dreaded the holidays. I did it the best of my ability because I wanted for all of our children to feel equal and because it was the way my husband’s family did things. Then came the Christmas from hell, one coup de resistance to push me over the edge and forever alter my chaos coma of Christmas.

Several years ago, while everyone was opening gifts and snacking on the Christmas confections, my dear, sweet, label driven, aristocratic stepsons had an epic mental breakdown. In front of our entire family, I was shamed for the gifts they were given. The jeans were not the right cut, the hoodies were in the wrong color/brand, the socks were too generic, and Xbox games I bought didn’t have all the features. Oh, I brought all the items on their list, from the right stores, but it was all wrong. Instead of just returning or saying thank you, I was put on notice repeatedly throughout the day how awful these gifts were and I loved my kids more because they got what they wanted and how had ruined their Christmas. I didn’t engage, I mean seriously what would that do? I could have coded blue, donned tinselmy nose hairs and had my mouth hung open dispersing hundred dollar bills …..nothing would have changed the fact that his kids were spoiled brats and were only trying to cause trouble. I simply told my husband, I was done buying gifts for his children…birthdays, holidays, graduations, etc. And, oh how liberality…the beauty of this temper tantrum I reflect upon it fondly.

See my husband is a practical man. His eyes grow wide when he sees a pair of Wrangler Blue Jeans on Black Friday for ten bucks because to him that is a great deal, and who doesn’t love a pair of Wranglers? Oh let’s see…his narcissist, label ridden, prima donnas! They would rather die than wear those Wranglers and my husband would never spend $60-80 on a pair of jeans in their brand of choice. So guess what happened? My husband true to word, handles all of the Christmas shopping for his four kids. Some of the best ones yet have been the 20 bass fishing lures and fishing poles in the middle of the arctic freeze, lures and poles great for summer but not for Christmas. The time when they asked for hoodies and sweats, he brought them hoodies and sweats, a pair of black, grey, green and red everlasting Russell at $6.00 a piece. And, the jeans, oh they didn’t like the Wranglers, so he bought them a no name brand in boot cut. Epic-ally it was two Christmas’s ago when they didn’t give him any ideas so it was tools , jumper cables and tire gauges for three boys who never took a shop class, have zero interest in mechanics, and the only time they have been on a tractor is to capture a great selfie.

Each Christmas, I early await the theme of their gifts – I heard rumblings this year of them asking for gift cards.
My SKIDS used to get the things they “wanted” when I shopped, now they get the things their father feels they need more than their wants. To this day, we still have a limit amount for each “child.” He shops for his and I shop for mine. We save our receipts and make a list of what we purchased. I have ZERO responsibility in purchasing my SKIDS gifts and I do not have wrap them either. I put all of the responsibility on my husband.

Yes, it is evil to giggle at Christmas, I am probably going to hell for feeling vindicated. But, the less responsibility I have to my SKIDs the better my life becomes. I feel like a little devil troll waiting to see the “shocked” look on their faces when they open each present. Part of me feels bad, but the other part of me feels this is one lesson in life they are reminded of each year and I didn’t have to flip my shit to make it happen.

Nice things don’t always come in pretty boxes and bows.