Stressing for Christmas

Now don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love Christmas. I truly believe it is the most wonderful time of the year. Everyone’s house is beautifully decorated with colorful lights or dull and boring white ones. People smile at me in the check out line at Walmart, instead of running me over with their carts to beat me to the “speed-thru line”. Friends and colleagues are giving me frosted, green and red, sugar cookies. Radio stations play “White Christmas” until I think I might actually vomit snow. The ACLU is trying to make everyone call them “holiday trees” to avoid offending all the non-Christians who decorate them this month. No, I certainly can’t deny the warm feeling I get starting the moment I finish my Thanksgiving pumpkin pie to the day I finally return all the clothes my mother thought were “so me”.

But, I can’t suppress the other feeling I get after I’ve finished the last piece of Halloween candy that didn’t find its way into a trick-or-treater’s sack. That sudden wave of nausea in my stomach. The tightness in my chest from the inability to breathe steadily. The clumps of hair that mysteriously wind up in the center of my fists. That dreadful feeling that somehow someone has stolen pages from my yearly calendar because it could not possibly be here already. We all know what I am talking about. Holiday stress! That mix of emotion between Christmas cheer and Christmas I-want-to-bang-my-head-into-a-wall-‘til-New Year’s.

Come on now. I work a full-time job. I own my own business which takes up most of the remaining 16 hours of my day. I have 5 four-legged children to take care of, one of whom does not use a litter box. Plus, I require at least 6 hours of sleep to prevent my turbo-bitch side from surfacing. (So we’re already up to a necessary 29-hour day.) I do all this while also attempting to keep friends and relatives occasionally reminded of what I look like and now I’m supposed to throw Christmas into the mix too?! You’ve got to be kidding me.

How the heck does anyone find time for fighting the Target crowds over the last two blu-ray players in the entire world? Who can actually wrap a teddy bear? What people seriously have the leisure of sitting through Rachel Ray’s “Holiday Eats” episodes and go into the kitchen and reenact what they witnessed? Who manages to create a magnificent electrical display on their front lawn using only the lights from the previous 16 Christmases? Why would anyone want to drink eggnog? Where are all the people like me who have no idea what dancing visions of sugar plums would look like because they haven’t slept all season?

I don’t know if I can take it another year. I think for 2009, I’ll hire someone to celebrate Christmas for me. I haven’t had a free moment to consider what I'd like from Santa anyway! So if you’re looking for any gift ideas for me, a Holiday Celebratory Specialist would be perfect. How can I argue with that?