Well, it's Ho, Ho, Ho time again, or Bah, Humbug depending on your attitude. I'm an HHH person while my ever lovin' is a BH guy. It's still a wonder to me that any woman isn't Bah, Humbug by December 26th. I think it's because we don't have the luxury. Let's face it: Christmas wouldn't happen without us. Let's take a little quiz: In your family.....
1) Who's buying the gifts for:
a) the kid(s)
b) the in-law's or parents
c) the other relatives
d) the teacher(s)
e) the co-workers
f) the friends (oh scratch that -
most men don't have friends)
2) Who's planning the holiday menus?
3) Who's doing the lion's share of the decorating?
4) Who's making holiday travel plans? Who's packing for the kid(s)?
5) Who's sending out any Christmas mail?
6) Who's wrapping almost everything?
I think I've made my point.
I will accept many of these jobs have gotten much much easier since the advent of delivery and the INTERNET. You will not hear a single peep against that wonderful tool by any woman old enough to remember the bad old days. Hit the rewind button...
It's 1980. Need to Christmas shop? You have two choices: Go to the store/mall with your handwritten list (if you were smart) and make your shopping chores one massive all day event with several trips to your car to stash the loot. At the end of the day with aching feet and a splitting headache from the constant Christmas tape in the mall, you promise yourself you will not buy another gift.
A second strategy was to have a crystal ball in July and attempt to get your Christmas shopping out of the way, so you wouldn't be so freakin' crazy in December. This plan was about 75% effective. I was an early shopper, but even I realized you just couldn't get ALL your gifts for Christmas during the summer - wrong clothes for one thing. However, you did get bragging rights. On December 10th the dialogue could go like this: "How much do you still have left to do for Christmas?" "Oh, I've been ready since July." Then you would get a look of pure hatred.
Another little hitch in the early shopping strategy was if you started early enough, you had to resist all the catalogs which would begin to pour into your house beginning October 1st. Sometimes I would have forty or fifty different catalogs by December 1st. The more people you bought gifts for, the more catalogs you would wind up getting in the mail. I had professional friends (who made money in their jobs) who would collect over a hundred during the holidays.
Just to clarify: To order out of a catalog, you could fill out the paper order form in the center of the catalog, cross your fingers and snailmail the form. OR you could call the toll free 1-800 number and deliver all the catalog item numbers together with names, addresses, etc by phone. An 800 number was important because no one ever called long distance voluntarily unless someone was born or died. Ma Bell (what we used to call AT&T when they were the one and only phone company) charged through the nose for long distance calls.
Hickory Farms as well as Harry & David pioneered catalog food. Hickory Farms was heavy on meat and Harry and David were heavy on fruit wrapped in gold tin foil. Every grandmother who had out of town family would wind up with summer sausage and tiny blocks of cheese in four flavors together with those little strawberry hard candies and/or four rock hard pears wrapped in foil. Considering the food gift wasn't more bath cubes (yes, those were a 'thing'), well 99% of these grannies were happy women.
Want to send flowers to someone in 1980? Well, telephone your local florist or stop by and laboriously print out all your addresses from your paper address book you toted around everywhere beginning Halloween for them to screw up as they relayed the orders around the country via land line telephone calls to other florists (AKA: FTD).
Surprisingly, Christmas tree purchase and decoration are still pretty much the same as 40 years ago. You go to 'your' Christmas tree lot, pick one, and tie it onto the top of your car, or if you live in NYC, you recruit someone and the two of you carry it home by hand. The crazy tree lights are still the same except they are miniaturized. In 1980, you could still find a string of lights in your cardboard Christmas boxes with bulbs the size of a newborn baby's fist. These came in a tasteful variety of primary colors. They would also generate enough heat to allow you to lower the thermostat. You might even find original 'bubble' lights in your box which only had a 50/50 chance of catching fire - but boy, they made a statement on your tree. In 1980, you did see a big uptic in fake Christmas trees. They had evolved enough, so if you squinted, they actually looked like real trees.
I think women created more home made gifts in 1980. This is just anecdotal, but my reasoning is there were fewer women in careers and more in jobs. You left a job and never gave it another thought until you had to punch in again. Also, women with careers make MONEY, and thus, while they have less time off work, they have more income to buy gifts and don't have to create them. When I was teaching, I worked in a school with fourteen teachers, three administrators, one custodian, three cafeteria people, and three support staff. So, of course, one December I made 25 jars of homemade jelly. Zounds! It only took me two years to brighten up and figure something else out on the work gift front.
There were also Secret Santa gifts, Angel Tree gifts, Girl Scout gifts, Teacher gifts, and Advent gifts at church. There was money for the paperboy - yes, everyone read a newspaper which was delivered to your door. There was money for your postman, and depending on your town's custom, for the garbageman. No, I am not kidding.
Then, there was the holiday food you were expected to take to a plethora of parties: office, neighborhood, church, and school if you had kids. Mostly, it had better be homemade or very, very well disguised, so it looked homemade because in 1980 women were still apologizing for WORKING OUTSIDE THE HOME. To this day I can still make ten kinds of holiday cookies. I used to set aside an entire Saturday in December to just make cookies.
Shall we talk about snail mail? One Christmas chore was 'going to the post office' usually multiple times and mailing both gifts and Christmas cards. At my peak I sent out over 100 Christmas cards. And, until 2000, I hand wrote a letter for any card that went 'out of town'. Each card was hand signed, hand addressed, and you still licked stamps. GRRGH - what your mouth tasted like after licking a zillion stamps.
Gradually, my Christmas chores have lessened as we have all come to the realization we have too much 'stuff'. We try for consumable gifts in our family which simplifies shopping immensely. I'm consciously trying to not just cover Cedric in presents. As any grandparent knows, saying 'no more' is truly hard. I'm also happy to say this year my charitable contributions will come close to equaling my other purchases.
When I look back, I ask myself what should I have done differently? Mostly, concentrating more on being 'in the moment' instead of being obsessed with meeting other people's expectations. Now, I'm always going to have a checklist and a schedule because I'm a classic Type A, but the internet and delivery allows me to simplify both. I can send flowers, food, presents and anything else with much much less effort.
I've learned it's not the end of the world if it's not homemade, so I save my craft skills for stuff I get pleasure making - like a Christmas tree shirt using yoyos and buttons for Cedric. I have an inflexible policy every child gets at book for Christmas and birthdays. I shop for calendars and special greeting cards like other people shop for diamonds. My Christmas card list is whittled down to people who really care they get a snail mail card. I love e-cards with a special message for the rest of the world. A wonderful Christmas is going to happen because I put out a lot of effort, but nowadays not so much effort that I'm frazzled for much of December.
Even in this age of the internet, rethink. Simplify your holiday routines, and I guarantee you will enjoy yourself more. Happy Holidays!
