We all know that when it comes to the holiday season there are
two types of people in the world: the super organized, who have
lights up, cards mailed, gifts bought and wrapped and sitting under
the tree, all finished by Nov. 29. And then there are those, what
I’ll call more laissez-faire types, who take down the Halloween
decorations in mid-December, send out Christmas cards after New
Year’s Day and are still frantically wrapping gifts the day the
tree is hauled out onto the front lawn.
We all know that when it comes to the holiday season there are two types of people in the world: the super organized, who have lights up, cards mailed, gifts bought and wrapped and sitting under the tree, all finished by Nov. 29. And then there are those, what I’ll call more laissez-faire types, who take down the Halloween decorations in mid-December, send out Christmas cards after New Year’s Day and are still frantically wrapping gifts the day the tree is hauled out onto the front lawn.
Now before you start pointing fingers, let me just say that I’ve been trying to qualify for the first group for years. I mean, who doesn’t want to be among the elite who calmly complete all holiday tasks on time without so much as breaking a nail?
But the truth of the matter is, I’m a big, fat Christmas slacker.
In my defense, it’s not really my fault. It’s just that during the Christmas season all of the organized people of the world make the rest of us look bad. I mean, at any other time of the year you can mostly coast along, missing a birthday here or a special event there without calling a lot of attention to yourself. But not so in December.
Oh, it’s not like I don’t try to mend my ways. Each year I make lists. I make schedules. I make empty promises of doing better. This year, I dropped the bomb over Thanksgiving dinner. I turned and looked my husband straight in the eye and said, “This Christmas we’re going to be organized! We’re putting up the lights tomorrow, getting the tree on Saturday, and sending out cards by the first of December!”
He smiled at me weakly. And, okay, I can understand why he’s a bit skeptical. Sticking to a schedule during the holiday season is iffy at best. Oh sure, at first everything is going along nicely. Then you miss the deadline for taking the family picture for the Christmas card, which in turn throws off the sending-of-the-cards deadline which, in turn, throws off the gift buying deadline because now you’re frantically addressing cards trying to catch up. And so it goes on and on, until there’s no way you could possibly catch up, unless somehow Christmas Eve gets moved closer to Easter.
What makes matters even worse is that almost everyone around me is part of that unfathomable race of super-organized people. All of my neighbors have had their Christmas decorations up since the end of November, and right now my friend Janet is lounging about her house in reindeer slippers (an early gift) up to her ears in snow globes and wrapped presents.
If you ask me, an easier way to seem organized is to hang around people who are even bigger slackers than you are. I mean, compared to my friend Linda, who still has a glow-in-the-dark skeleton taped to her front door, I’m overwhelmingly efficient.
However, this year I’m going to do what any unorganized and slightly desperate person would do: change my goals. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during all this time being a parent, it is that if you keep expectations low enough it’s easy to exceed them. So now my main priority isn’t getting the lights up by Dec. 25, it’s untangling them. Instead of having all of the presents wrapped, it’s finding the paper I bought on sale for half price last year. And instead of having all of the Christmas cards sent out before Christmas Eve, it’s getting them sent out sometimes before, say, Easter Sunday. Hey, sometimes with the Christmas season, you just have to choose your battles.
