{"id":1051,"date":"2013-11-21T01:26:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T01:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2013-11-21T01:32:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T01:32:36","slug":"christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas."},"content":{"rendered":"

I won’t lie, I have not always been a big fan of Christmas.\u00a0 Not because I am a scrooge, quite the opposite in my opinion.\u00a0 It is such a wonderful holiday to bless others, spend time with family and give thanks for the reason we are here- Jesus.\u00a0 Whether you consider yourself religious or not, does not matter.\u00a0 Holidays are about love and family, you don’t need to believe in God to appreciate that.\u00a0 But that is not what this country celebrates.\u00a0 This country celebrates Christmas with THINGS.\u00a0 Things that are shiny, things that are green and red, things that we do not need but it is CHRISTMAS so we buy them.\u00a0 We spend our hard earned and saved money on gifts that most people will either return, re-gift, or never use.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Will those relationships falter if you don’t buy them something?\u00a0 Will the world come crashing down if somebody doesn’t have a present to open on Christmas morning?\u00a0 Of COURSE NOT.\u00a0 So why are THINGS so important to everybody this time of year?<\/p>\n

\"christmas2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I love buying people gifts.\u00a0 It is actually one of my favorite things to do.\u00a0 I love finding that PERFECT gift for somebody.\u00a0 Maybe the gift is $10 dollars, maybe it is $50, maybe it is free- just depends on the year and what I find. \u00a0 But I like putting thought into my presents to other people, not just buying them something because it was on sale for a dollar on Black Friday and I had to punch out 4 people at 3am to get it. Again, I love the idea of exchanging gifts, but I have always felt it was not done right.<\/p>\n

\"christmas3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But then again, is shopping for families who are less fortunate all the same?\u00a0 We are still buying them stuff they don’t need after all right?\u00a0 This is something Shain and I do every year and it is one of my favorite traditions of ours, so I suppose I am hypocritical in that sense.\u00a0 But knowing I am buying a few fun things for a child who otherwise would not have anything, makes me feel better than buying something for somebody just because\u00a0 I “have to”.<\/p>\n

But alas, it is impossible to be with somebody like Shain, and not LOVE Christmas, even with it’s faults. \u00a0 My family has always done Christmas up pretty good, but the Diaz family…whoa.\u00a0 They don’t mess around.\u00a0\u00a0 They have introduced me to so many fun traditions that I now cherish very much.\u00a0 Being around Shain this time of year,\u00a0 is literally like watching a little kid.\u00a0 Despite not even being Thanksgiving yet, we have had Christmas radio on in the car and house non-stop.\u00a0 If it were not for my pleading, Christmas decorations would have been up weeks ago.\u00a0\u00a0 He loves Christmas SO much that on actual Christmas day he becomes very sad and mopey, because it means the season is almost over.\u00a0 I am not kidding people.<\/p>\n

\"Christmas1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So despite me feeling conflicted for many reasons about this time of year, the joy and excitement of it are inevitable.\u00a0 I still don’t agree with the the “stuff” part of Christmas, but I can get behind the anticipation of traditions with friends and family and watching movies like Elf,<\/em> It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em> and Christmas Story<\/em> a million times over.\u00a0\u00a0 I encourage you to really think about how you approach this holiday season- I am not saying we should boycott gifts all together, but there needs to be more than just gifts.\u00a0 Take your family to a soup kitchen, volunteer to sponsor a family, go Christmas Caroling or maybe just spend more time doing nothing with the ones you love most. If you are going to buy a gift, make it matter.\u00a0 If not, just take that person out for coffee instead.\u00a0 Relationships that are built upon fond memories are stronger than those built upon things.<\/p>\n

Stay blessed in the mess \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won’t lie, I have not always been a big fan of Christmas.\u00a0 Not because I am a scrooge, quite the opposite in my opinion.\u00a0 It is such a wonderful holiday to bless others, spend time with family and give thanks for the reason we are here- Jesus.\u00a0 Whether you consider yourself religious or not, does not matter.\u00a0 Holidays are about love and family, you don’t need to believe in God to appreciate that.\u00a0 But that is not what this country celebrates.\u00a0 This country celebrates Christmas with THINGS.\u00a0 Things that are shiny, things that are green and red, things that we do not need but it is CHRISTMAS so we buy them.\u00a0 We spend our hard earned and saved money on gifts that most people will either return, re-gift, or never use.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Will those relationships falter if you don’t buy them something?\u00a0 Will the world come crashing down if somebody doesn’t have a present to open on Christmas morning?\u00a0 Of COURSE NOT.\u00a0 So why are THINGS so important to everybody this time of year? Don’t get me wrong, I love buying people gifts.\u00a0 It is actually one of my favorite things to do.\u00a0 I love finding that PERFECT gift for somebody.\u00a0 Maybe the gift is $10 dollars, maybe it is $50, maybe it is free- just depends on the year and what I find. \u00a0 But I like putting thought into my presents to other people, not just buying them something because it was on sale for a dollar on Black Friday and I had to punch out 4 people at 3am to get it. Again, I love the idea of exchanging gifts, but I have always felt it was not done right. But then again, is shopping for families who are less fortunate all the same?\u00a0 We are still buying them stuff they don’t need after all right?\u00a0 This is something Shain and I do every year and it is one of my favorite traditions of ours, so I suppose I am hypocritical in that sense.\u00a0 But knowing I am buying a few fun things for a child who otherwise would not have anything, makes me feel better than buying something for somebody just because\u00a0 I “have to”. But alas, it is impossible to be with somebody like Shain, and not LOVE Christmas, even with it’s faults. \u00a0 My family has always done Christmas up pretty good, but the Diaz family…whoa.\u00a0 They don’t mess around.\u00a0\u00a0 They have introduced me to so many fun traditions that I now cherish very much.\u00a0 Being around Shain this time of year,\u00a0 is literally like watching a little kid.\u00a0 Despite not even being Thanksgiving yet, we have had Christmas radio on in the car and house non-stop.\u00a0 If it were not for my pleading, Christmas decorations would have been up weeks ago.\u00a0\u00a0 He loves Christmas SO much that on actual Christmas day he becomes very sad and mopey, because it means the season is almost over.\u00a0 I am not kidding people. So despite me feeling conflicted for many reasons about this time of year, the joy and excitement of it are inevitable.\u00a0 I still don’t agree with the the “stuff” part of Christmas, but I can get behind the anticipation of traditions with friends and family and watching movies like Elf, It’s a Wonderful Life and Christmas Story a million times over.\u00a0\u00a0 I encourage you to really think about how you approach this holiday season- I am not saying we should boycott gifts all together, but there needs to be more than just gifts.\u00a0 Take your family to a soup kitchen, volunteer to sponsor a family, go Christmas Caroling or maybe just spend more time doing nothing with the ones you love most. If you are going to buy a gift, make it matter.\u00a0 If not, just take that person out for coffee instead.\u00a0 Relationships that are built upon fond memories are stronger than those built upon things. Stay blessed in the mess \ud83d\ude42    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}