Christmas

So I have decided that Christmas is the worse time of the year. Don’t get me wrong I love getting together with family, I love seeing my kids light up on Christmas morning. The thing that I hate is the STRESS. Christmas time is such a pain because I have a big family. We get together every year and everybody buys tons of gifts for all of the kids. This means that we have to buy gifts for all the kids. My wife and I are both full time in college and as such we don’t have a lot of income at the moment. We have three kids of our own and just buying for them would be tough. Putting all these extra gifts on top of the list that we are getting for our kids it is at times unbearable. I sometimes feel like that if we buy for all these family members then we are taking away from our own kids. Not to mention this is the first year that I am not making a lot of money. In the years past I have always had a good job and quite a bit of money for things like this. Last year we bought our two older kids new four wheelers. This year it will not be like that. I have always been the provider for my family and have always spent lots of money on them for birthdays and Christmas, not because I wanted to show off how much money I made or anything like that. I love seeing the kids’ eyes when they unwrap that amazing gift (or gifts). The holidays now are more stress than anything and I feel as if I am competing with myself to buy gifts. I can’t even get close to giving them anything like they had last year. I do know what most would tell me that it isn’t really about the gifts and that the holidays are about being with your family. I know this but kids don’t always understand this when their friends are telling them what all they got for Christmas. The disappointment that they can have tears me up inside. I was poor growing up and my parents did the best that they could with what they had. I know now that they went without a lot of things so that I my sister and my brother could have good gifts. I have always appreciated that and loved them for it, but that never helped when I would hear about all the cool things that my friends got for Christmas. I remember wishing and praying that we would hit the lottery and be “rich” like my friends’ parents. My kids will be like me and very appreciative for what they get I know for sure. And they are getting good gifts and plenty of them. Most of this is probably me wanting to give my family the world and not being happy until they have every single thing that they could possibly want.