{"id":24309,"date":"2014-12-28T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=24309"},"modified":"2014-12-27T20:02:34","modified_gmt":"2014-12-28T01:02:34","slug":"do-we-need-a-better-way-to-celebrate-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=24309","title":{"rendered":"Do we need a better way to celebrate Christmas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between the stress and the cost, are we doing something wrong?<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kelly Hockenberry<\/strong>, Columnist, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"UTKellyColumn<\/a>Last week, I wrote about my angst over Christmas shopping. I stress every year. What size?\u00a0What color? Will they like it? Will they use it? By the 25th I am a frazzled mess. The funny thing\u00a0is, my children are always appreciative of any gift they receive. But, I do spend a good amount\u00a0of time in a looooong, post-holiday return line. I am adamant that unless they LOVE it, it needs\u00a0to go back. Otherwise, it is one more thing to take up space or collect dust. Not happenin\u2019,\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

There MUST be a better way to celebrate. It seems very impersonal to hand loved ones gift\u00a0cards or cash. Although it seems to garner a positive response, I just can\u2019t seem to bring myself\u00a0to do it.<\/p>\n

My girlfriends and I were commiserating over how much harder it is to buy for teenagers as\u00a0opposed to younger children. Remember when opening gifts would take hours worth of time?\u00a0Now, we are finished in roughly ten minutes and that is only if we force the boys to take turns.<\/p>\n

And, the price of Christmas seems to escalate yearly. My younger son wanted the latest video\u00a0gaming system (which Santa refused to bring). It was over four hundred dollars and games are\u00a0eighty bucks a piece. Ummmm, NO. But, at the end of the day, all of his \u201clittle gifts\u201d resulted in\u00a0this amount plus some. Ridiculous. Absurd.<\/p>\n

Be honest. Who else worries about creating an even number of presents per child? I find myself\u00a0repetitively counting, Rainman style, to ensure an equal tower per boy under the tree. I have\u00a0heard that some families (and this may be an urban legend because I certainly don\u2019t know any,\u00a0personally) who celebrate with the exchange of three gifts in honor of the Wise Men. I like this\u00a0idea! While the pressure is still on to find that \u201cperfect present\u201d, at least the volume of purchases\u00a0would decrease.<\/p>\n

I must say, my favorite part of Christmas this year was surprising our kids with an upcoming\u00a0family trip. I would much rather spend money on creating a memory we will have forever rather\u00a0than a material thing.<\/p>\n

What are your favorite holiday traditions? Has your family figured out a way to calm the hustle\u00a0and bustle? Please share in the Comment section below!<\/p>\n

Happy Holiday Weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between the stress and the cost, are we doing something wrong? By Kelly Hockenberry, Columnist, The Times Last week, I wrote about my angst over Christmas shopping. I stress every year. What size?\u00a0What color? Will they like it? Will they use it? By the 25th I am a frazzled mess. The funny thing\u00a0is, my children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245,7],"tags":[160,703,625,1730],"class_list":["post-24309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-featured","tag-christmas","tag-gifts","tag-holidays","tag-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24310,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24309\/revisions\/24310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}