Jude is the first one I know to post about Christmas. I’m fully engaged in not getting a jump on the season once again.

The first thing I’m not doing is the cards. Jude is justifably annoyed by the early birds who send out their cards before anyone else. You won’t find me doing that. I’ve refined my method for holiday cards. I used to go out and buy them early and then put off addressing them until I was sending them out too late to be received by Christmas. No more. Now I have a lot of partial boxes of cards that have accumulated over the years and what I do is when I get a card from someone, depending on my guilt level when it arrives, I sometimes dig one out and send out a reciprocal card. It doesn’t sound like a method, but it is. If anyone is considering taking me off their list, I’m for it, so this way, I’m absolutely sure that I won’t interfere with that.

There’s the giving and receiving. I have no idea what to get anyone in my life. When Joey (my prospective grandson) arrives there will be one person I can shop for easily. That’ll last until he gets particular and it becomes impossible to keep track of what he’s already got and what he doesn’t. My granddaughter will be twelve going on 23 right after Christmas. Anything I get her will be wrong. I thought my perennially broke son would want cash, but he said he was so behind that nothing we gave him could possibly make a difference so he’d rather have some cool stuff. No indication as to what cool stuff he’s interested in.

As to the older adults in our family - none of us has room for anything. The place is full. We don’t have much closet space. We need to use up all the old stuff for a couple of years before we get anything new. What we really need is new kitchens and bathrooms, but those won’t be in Santa’s bag. My in-laws will send us cash gifts and we will respond with gift cerficates of approximately equal value. Similar pointless transactions will occur with other members of the family. The fact is, no one wants or needs anything that anyone else can afford, but there’s still the desire to have some shiny packages to open, so we keep doing it.

Then there are the work gifts. That’s a bit of torture. No matter how carefully you try to figure it out, someone that you didn’t get something for is going to give you a gift. And you’re going to embarass someone by giving them one when they didn’t get you anything. It’s a rule. Actually, most people at work give me gifts because it’s a tradition there to gift the receptionist. The first year I was there, that was fun. The next year, it was kind of enough is enough. I still have two or three sets of spa stuff that I haven’t opened.

In the US of A, however, we have to get through Thanksgiving before we can get to Christmas. Thanksgiving is a less stressful holiday because it’s just about food. But there’s still the fact that you can’t spend it with everyone at once. We used to have it here most years, but we gave up our dining room when everyone moved in and frankly, I don’t think I’m up to it this year anyway. My daughter has taken over a lot of our holidays, which is wonderful, but this year she and her husband are spending Thankgiving with his relatives. We’ll go to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s house. It sounds like a simple solution, but it won’t be. My mother isn’t going to be able to remember what we’re doing. She’ll start making conflicting plans with other, almost equally confused, relatives. All kinds of awkwardness will result. I can see it coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Now I have to admit that last year the holidays were wonderful by and large. It was the first year my daughter and her family were living upstairs from us and we were together, but not squished together like the year before. I just don’t think it’s going to go as smoothly this year.