Making My List, Checking It Twice

Right about now you are either (a) receiving all the fabulous gifts that you ordered online for friends and family; or (b) just starting to make your list.

Yikes. I’m in the middle. Sometime in October I found a bunch of great items – good bargains, too – online and ordered them. Those arrived at my home early; they have been wrapped, and are in the mail to my family who is 3,000 miles away. If our pals at FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service don’t drink too much eggnog, everything will be where it’s supposed to be on time.

But then, there are the stragglers… the gifts I’ve been meaning to finish making for a month: beaded jewelry, handmade organic soap, even a few vintage baubles from eBay that I had hoped to dip in the silver polish by now. Each day, I think, “Well, I could finish them up today and mail them and they’ll get there on time…” then, “OK, I could always pay a little extra and mail them Priority…” Now it’s down to this: either I pay a pretty penny to ship them via overnight delivery or a couple of folks on my list are getting their gifts in January.

Our family is so big (I have more than two dozen nieces and nephews) that sometimes I think the January gifts are actually kind of a treat. When I was a kid, the gifts for my all my brothers and sisters and I filled our living room. I have a picture of my youngest brother, when he was just a tyke, sitting in the middle of about a hundred presents! We had no idea, as children, what it took for our parents to provide that kind of Christmas for us. Even with Santa’s help, it was quite astonishing. We didn’t realize what our parents had gone without (they went on one vacation alone during 40 years, and that was by car) for us to have that special day every year.

In all the rush of opening presents, I always wanted to save a few gifts for the next day. This caused no end of frustration (I would have “more” gifts after everyone else had opened theirs). I wanted to stretch out the gifts and keep a little something to look forward to.

So maybe the people on my list who will get their gifts after December 25th will enjoy the late-arriving packages. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

Well, I’ve got to run to the post office. I just now finished my Christmas cards!

Until next time,

Conna