Eight shopping days left.

Are you done with your Christmas shopping? I'm not. I'm planning on finishing up this weekend. When did Christmas shopping become such a drag? I used to really enjoy it. In general, I used to enjoy shopping a lot more than I do now, but something about Christmas shopping has become particularly gruesome to me. It's not that I don't like getting things for people I love. In fact, that's the only part of Christmas shopping that I enjoy anymore. I really love doing something that I'm hoping will bring a little bit of joy into the lives of my friends and family. I just hate the crowds because they add more time to whole process. I hate being crammed in with so many other people. Crazy people, as it were. Christmas shopping makes people crazy. The same kind of crazy you always find in Price Club shoppers. That frantic I've-got-to-get-this-before-you-do kind of shopper. Shopping in Price Club can be a contact sport if you keep an eye out for the people around you because if you see something you like, you better grab it because it probably won't be there the next time you go. So, everyone goes crazy thinking they've got to get that thing, whatever it is. When it comes to getting the gifts for my daughter, we've told her she writes her letter to Santa and then he decides which of the items on her list he'll give her. I wrote that into the contract as my get out of jail for free clause because I DO NOT want to be in the situation where I'm schleping from place to place trying to find the only remaining Cabbage Patch doll in town. I refuse to do that. The parents who do that sort of thing think they'll be destryong their children's belief in Santa Claus if they don't get every freaking thing on their lists, but what they don't realize is that they created that unreasonable expectation in their kids by letting them think that's the way Santa operates. We made it clear from the get-go that Santa never brings everything on the list, and that, really, the letter is just a list of suggestions for Santa so that he knows he's on the right page. It's worked pretty well so far. I have to say, as a sidenote, that I really appreciated the North Pole scenes in the movie Elf where all the Christmas elves are making things like Barbie, Etch-a-Sketch and Monopoly. That was a brilliant way to explain to kids why Santa brings toys like the ones in the stores.