{"id":406,"date":"2006-11-21T12:04:37","date_gmt":"2006-11-21T17:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgetful.ca\/?p=510"},"modified":"2006-11-21T12:04:37","modified_gmt":"2006-11-21T17:04:37","slug":"the-christmas-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I worked at Toys R Us for five years while in school, and I have to tell you, nothing kills your Christmas spirit like carols that begin in November, screaming children and panicked parents who’ve left looking for the ‘it’ toy to the last minute.\u00a0 For employees of the retail industry, there is nothing calming about the holiday season.\u00a0 Their shifts get longer and busier, customers get angrier and more rude, and\u00a0they get a maximum of a day and a half off to recover from the madness before the chaos of ‘gift return’ season begins on the 26th.\u00a0 All in all, it ain’t fun.\u00a0 I’m happy that I’m no longer on the\u00a0paid side of the cash register.<\/p>\n

\"santa-claus-797196.jpg\"<\/a>Since then, Christmas has taken on new meaning for me.\u00a0\u00a0Dan and I have\u00a0been able to host my family a couple of times, be the ones to cook the dinner (mostly Dan), and the ones to stuff the stockings before everyone wakes up in the morning.\u00a0\u00a0I’ve even been able to convince Dan that the decorating of the tree should be done no later than December 1st (my nanny’s rule) and that it must involve singing carols,\u00a0drinking eggnog and consuming mountains of food (my rule).\u00a0 I truly adore Christmas and all that comes with it.<\/p>\n

And then this year came along.\u00a0 Always one to have completed shopping before December (mostly to avoid shopping in December<\/em>), and\u00a0I’ve hardly bought anything at all yet.\u00a0 I think a lot of it stems from the other things\u00a0going on in my\u00a0life this year that I haven’t had to think about in the past.\u00a0 The baby and and all things baby-related and of course, finishing up at work (24 days!!) have taken over my brain.<\/p>\n

So when Dan asked me when I’d like to decorate this year, and my answer consisted of a shrug and an “I don’t know”, we knew there was a problem.\u00a0 Other than knowing Christmas falls on December 25th, I haven’t paid attention to much else.\u00a0 That is until my trip to Hallmark.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I can’t explain it.\u00a0 But seeing all the cards, decorations, singing snowmen, santas of all sizes and the red and green everything that has enveloped the store reminded me of what I’d been missing for months: the Christmas spirit.\u00a0 I purchased a few things\u00a0for the holiday, but mostly I started to feel some real excitement about the upcoming visit from the man in red.<\/p>\n

If Dan thought he had escaped\u00a0the early decorating\u00a0that he experienced in\u00a0seasons past, he may be a bit shocked to find out that I’m already scheming to have the house all lit up by next weekend.\u00a0 Looks like he’ll be spending some time outside on the ladder.\u00a0 And I’ve got BIG plans for this year….<\/p>\n

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I worked at Toys R Us for five years while in school, and I have to tell you, nothing kills your Christmas spirit like carols that begin in November, screaming children and panicked parents who’ve left looking for the ‘it’ toy to the last minute.\u00a0 For employees of the retail industry, there is nothing calming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}