Christmas Before Thanksgiving

I've been looking forward to Christms a lot this year, which is a reversal for me. Thanksgiving is my favorite of all favorite holidays but I've been focusing on Christmas. I suppose it all began when I started thinking about people's Christmas gifts in July and August.

I hate Christmas shopping in December. Retails stores are always trying desperately to sell you products that your family members and friends would like desperately not to have to return. How many electric shavers can a dad want? If your mom wears perfume, doesn't she already have some? How many pictures frames with "sister" or "dad" or "mom" or "family" can you buy for your family members? And surely most people now already own a really expensive wine wine opener.... Plus, I always seem to find exactly what I want for someone 4 days before Christmas but I have to order it online. And there is no way to buy something 4 days before Christmas and expect it to arrive in time, even if you do pay a million dollars to ship it.

So I've been buying everything early. All the gifts are in a big plastic container in my apartment, just waiting to be wrapped and given. There is also the added bonus that I have bought these over time so there shouldn't be checking account shock in December this year.

I think one of the reasons I'm excited about Christmas is also because for Thanksgiving this year it's only my parents and me. No one else is coming and my parents are disinclined to cook for just the three of us. And I suppose lately I'm having a hard time being grateful.

Oh, I'm grateful for the physical and monetary things in my life. I'm grateful for family. But I'm so dissapointed in so many things and so many people that I find myself wanting to gloss over Thanksgiving this year. Normally, I'm most thankful for people and this year I find myself having a hard time being grateful.

This is not because all of my friends are awful or anything. If anything, I've been an awful friend to so many people. I've been forgetting to call Toby when it's not midnight for so long that I've taken to keeping a giant post-it note tacked onto my laptop with "CALL TOBY" written on it in thick, red Sharpie and underlined several times to further the point.

Last night I talked to my sister (twin) on the phone for almost two hours. This might not seem out of the ordinary to you, but I think the last time we talked on the phone may have been a month or two ago and the time before that as far removed as this one. We covered the full gamut of topics including politics, religion, abortion, sex, Christmas, Thanksgiving, family, the environment, our jobs, the future, etc. Every time we thought to get off the phone, one of us would ramble on about a new subject and then the phone conversation would last another 20 minutes.... until it was truly time to just get off the phone and go to sleep. I meant to get so much done last night but I can't complain about talking to my sister.

I'm just not grateful this year; I'm pessimistic. I'm doubtful. I wish Thanksgiving was in another part of the year this year so that it could just come at any other time than now. This whole entry might not make sense to anyone, and for that I apologize.