It's Christmas Soon

Who's excited about it? Does anyone have any plans?

I'm not a Christmas person. Halloween is my favourite holiday. I'm not even too excited about getting presents. This year, I told all of my family and friends that instead of buying me anything, they should take that money and donate it to charity instead. I have everything I could possibly want so I'd much rather people help someone that's actually in need. I have a couple parties to attend but other than that, I'm not doing anything special. Didn't decorate the house or anything. I think a lot of people get too caught up in the commercial aspect rather than the true meaning.

Well my Christmas holidays officially started today. I'm excited just because I get a break (sort of!).

Christmas Day itself - I stopped caring quite a few years back really. >.<

I don't celebrate Christmas, but all my friends and family do...so I always get gifts, and then I feel bad so I end up getting them gifts too, and I always get invited to parties....but remember, I don't celebrate Christmas...

I'm not really a big Christmas fan, especially since it's a supremely busy time at work (6 day weeks and overtime on all of them). I do like giving people gifts though cause I tend to put a lot of thought into them so I get really good reactions. Most of the decorating and such is done by my husband since he loves Christmas. November is always a battle between Hallowe'en and Christmas decorations. :laugh:

We don't really celebrate Christmas here either, at least not any more. I rather say Christmas is just a good excuse to have something special to eat. :silly:

My parents did more for it when my sister and I were kids, but then that was just a xmas tree; we didn't get any gifts as our bday-s were close to Christmas, so if there were any gifts, they were birthday gifts. (My sister was born December 30th, me January 1st (not in that order, I'm the older one ) - great timing, right? :woohoo:)

I don't like the materialistic side of Christmas, but this year I haven't been looking at all those decorations with distaste... I must say I quite like them - surprised at myself about admitting that. :dry: It's just so grey here in Zagreb, if there wasn't any deco, it would be really really depressing.

I'm also looking forward to our xmas tree at home. We have a plastic one we reuse almost every year, but I do miss the pine smell (when we were kids we always had a real living tree which we would plant outside with our dad after xmas). Wonder if we'll put it up this year.
We didn't have it up for a couple of years because our grandmother passed away on December 22th (buried on Christmas Eve), so holidays are a bit sad when we start off remembering a death-day. I think this year could be ok, I feel everybody has finally managed to finish grieving...

No parties and no exchanging gifts with friends. There just isn't such a custom. Like cemwerwolf, I like giving people gifts, but I usually only have a chance for the person's bday... Sometimes I wonder if I could/should get a xmas gift for a couple of my close friends, but I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable and obliged to get me something in return, so I just give up on the idea.

Well, I must confess that I've sent out a few xmas cards this year - first time I did it too! :blush: Only did it because I got some cards for free and thought it would be a waste if I threw them away... I think I may repeat that next year...

Well normally we have a big Xmas party on the 24th at my grandmother's place and the 25th is usually really quiet - mum's brother comes over and we have stir-fried turkey. (Yes you heard right, stir-fried turkey...the tradtion started one year when our oven decided to not work. So we chopped up the turkey and made a stir fry. If the weather's nice sometime's we barbeque it instead. ) Anyway, this year is going to be very quiet because my grandmother's in hospital and so without her we kinda feel a little...lost I guess. She loves this time of year and she's always the one who runs the whole show.