What Happens In December

If there's one thing that I hate about this time of year it's that everybody is so freaked out about trying to impress everyone. Christmas is an amazing time and when you look at it's true meaning and origin then it is simply a beautiful holiday and reason for celebration.

My family, my dear mother in particular, developed a habit that is quite annoying regarding the usage of time during the December holidays. We always work. Usually on home D.I.Y. projects like painting rooms or fences, stripping carpets, rearranging gardens, chopping down trees, varnishing floors etc. For me, I'm not really the type of person that enjoys doing physical labour. I'm not lazy, I would just much rather make use of my time in a way that I see as more beneficial. The thing is that I'm on holiday for 4-6 weeks in December depending on how the government was feeling when they set the annual school holiday calendar. One would think that would be ample time to relax, spend time with friends, OCCASIONALLY do household work other that chores and just take a breath from a long, busy and stressful school year. Right? Ha! Not in my house. I might as well be under house arrest from the week prior to Christmas and the week after New Years. 

My mother loves to fabricate excuses as to why my siblings and I can't go out as much as our friends request us to. The week directly after school closes she uses the excuse that we have just seen our friends and we don't need to see them so soon after school closes. My parents have their wedding anniversary on the 16th of December and sometimes choose to go away by themselves or to completely retract from the outside world even just for that day. Then it's Christmas and New Years which is a time where "we have a lot of work to do at home" according to my mother. Finally  when the holiday has been whittled down to it's last week or so, my mother resorts to her most evil, I feel, of all rejections: "You'll see them again at school, you don't need to see them now". It's so frustrating... I never feel like I have a decent holiday because we're always working (AND I HATE MANUAL LABOUR) and I hardly get to see my friends.

I know quite well that I sound wonderfully selfish and perhaps unappreciative at the moment and I admit that I tend to fall back to that quite often. That is what blogging is for- to express what can't necessarily be expressed to others for fear of inability to adequately communicate your ideas.

I love Christmas for the fellowship it promises each year but I hate the dealings that come along with it at this time. The cheap accessories that cheapen the Christmas experience all-together:
- Commercialism
- Materialism
- Manual Labour
- Isolation

Sigh. I'm trying really hard to strike a balance. I have a lot to do these holidays and I cannot be stuck at home for four weeks. 

No way on God's green earth.

--J.