Reply #187: I'm with this group unfortunately. Christmas exhausts me. [View All]

Between shopping for gifts for clients, family, friends and "others" (kids' music teacher, the newspaper delivery person who shamelessly trolls for a hand out, the postman etc.) - the season just is about a crazy fucking non-stop commercial handout.

I love to surprise my newspaper delivery guy with a mug of hot chocolate now and then throughout the year. He LOVES it. But that doesn't relieve me of my guilt over the fact that he is trolling for a tip when he slips his name and address into my Sunday trib this week.... He wants cash or a gift. I have to shop for a gift for my clients - something that "means" something to them but won't break my bank. And on and on and on. By the time I get around to shopping for my family, I am deeply resentful and relying upon credit cards and hating all of them.

I HATE this season by the time 12/25 comes around. HATE it. Hate the music, the pressure, the inevitability of the grotesque expense. It drives me mad. I wish I could escape the merry go round but how? I don't have time to "craft" some home made specialty. No ability to stitch up some lovely thang. I KNOW the season is supposed to be about the "feelings", and "love", and "traditions" but for those of us in the small biz world, the tremendous pressure in that arena alone is intense. And that doesn't include the "others" who (desperately) rely upon the small bequests of gift cards and tokens to survive (one example being my daughter's music teacher who replenishes her stock music for her students out of gift cards from xmas - perpetuating the vicious cycle I feel immersed in....).

When did the holiday become this horrid round of expectations? And as a business, if you don't "live up" to pandering to your clientele, you definitely suffer.