do i see a tree

It's the holiday season and all around me are lights and wreaths and bangles going up. In our neighborhood there is a plastic santa that seems to be on the move...he travels from lawn to lawn without any apparent warning.

One friend has eleven five foot trees that she puts up every year. Eleven!! One is a Wizard of Oz tree, an angel tree, a pink tree, a valentine tree, a gold tree. They're all over the house. Another friend of mine is so worried that she doesn't have enough decorations (her house was exploding at the seams last year but that was then...maybe the house grew in the last year). The malls are crowded, people seem very stressed and overwhelmed and in many ways unhappy.

While I am looking forward to Christmas I'm looking forward to the getting together with family part. I've put up a few decorations, I have gotten out the christmas tablecloth, I've put on the christmas music, but somehow I find myself not that into the whole overcommercialized oversaturated marketing hype. I think the fact that I have been seeing christmas c**p in the stores since before halloween and listening to christmas carols and seeing ads for it since before thanksgiving has taken away much of the joy of the season. It's supposed to be about friends and family and gratitude. Not about presents and money and greed.

I've gone so far as to think that I may not even put up the tree this year. String up a few more decorations, put up the stocking and call it a holiday. Simpler, more peaceful and less stressful.

Actually this brings me to the realization that I am thoroughly overwhelmed and fed up with all the overcommercialized holidays. The halloween "villages" that they sell now for decorations? You're supposed to buy all of this overpriced stuff to put it up for a few weeks and then find room to pack it away until the next year? No wonder we are buying bigger and bigger houses, we're taking on too many possessions. Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July, all of this is moving away from a rememberance day or a day of special celebration and becoming an excuse to buy more junk. I feel like an oddball for being one of those who doesn't participate but I want out...don't want to do this overcommercialized overadvertized unquiet stress anymore.

We'll see if the tree goes up or not but I think it's definitely going to be a lower key, hopefully calmer holiday celebration in our family this year.