So...

[Starfox]

... my American friends. have you recovered from Thanksgiving and the day after? A lot of Turkeys certainly didn't, but I guess we'll call that a noble sacrifice... (Not sure the turkeys see it that way though).

But seriously... (no I don't go into Phil Collins mode right now, I could but but we don't sing in the same register so... nah). I hope you had a good one!

[Silver Sorrow]

I didn't catch a stomach bug from mingling with family this year, so I call that a successful holiday.

Lest it all be doom and gloom, I will say that I look forward to the holidays for three reasons: lactose-free egg nog, cranberry ginger ale (Canada Dry), and for Xmas, buying myself something stupidly expensive under the guise of "because I was a good boy this year," even though my download history might say otherwise.

And when I say "stupidly expensive" I mean in a relative sense. Nothing on a Lamborghini level, but...let's just say "sensibly stupid." If it's over $150, it's a big ol' nope from me. I still have to eat after the holidays.

Flashback to the 80's: one year, under the tree was the G.I. Joe Skystriker. The next? Optimus Prime and a small army of his friends and enemies and...well, Super Go-Bots, which didn't exactly go with the whole Transformers thing, but I integrated them together. It was very inclusive of me. I still feel traumatized by the fact that I never got the USS Flagg, although I understand that therapy is expensive and thus I shall have to just learn to live with my pain.

And it never occurred to me until recently that I have so very few toys left over from my misspent youth. Thinking about it, I figured out the culprit: my mother. She was supremely talented at throwing away *my* things, but again, therapy is expensive so I just sit here and seethe.

Anyway, my dad always went all out on one present for me and for my mom, so it was no surprise that the American Express bills were being paid well into summer...

EDIT: I meant $150, not $250. Jeez. Definitely can't justify $250 for anything short of furniture.

[Silver Sorrow]

It just occurred to me that my $150 limit for big stupid expensive gifts...well. That means that every time I go grocery shopping it's just like Xmas. 

[Starfox]

I don't know how I feel about Christmas this year, as you can imagine. I have surprisingly few solid memories from my childhood Holidays and most of them regards not toys but time spent with family -- mainly my parents (for age reasons I was never really that close to my brothers). I might have been a weird little boy considering that I never wrote a single letter to Santa Claus asking for such or such toy. That may have to do with the fact that my family name literally means Christmas in a Southern French dialect which would have made of my father "Father Christmas" which is what we call Santa Claus in French, so I may have taking the gifts for granted.😄

Because I never asked for a gift that I would actually like, letting people guessing, I ended up with a lot of gifts I didn't like or even need, for that matter. I remember this odd contraption where you put some color liquids on one end, a white tee-shirt on the other, you turned a little handle and what resulted was the psychedelic dreams of a guy on a very high dose of LSD all over the tee-shirt. I never voiced my opinion out loud but I was like "What the crap is that thing? What idiot could even think it was a perfect toy for a normal child?"

My favorite gift was a chemistry set, but only because I realized (due to a failure of government oversight that was only rectified a couple of years later) that the products contained within allowed for the preparation of a full blown (pun intended) vial of nitroglycerin. I must have been 7 or 8 back then and I remember that I was shocked (oddly enough I already knew what nitroglycerin was and the components required -- and no, I wasn't an early weirdo, I just always had a thing for chemistry) but also I was more than a little amused that absolutely no adult managed to think that a chemistry set directed to children that allowed the preparation of explosives was a bit... weird. But I loved my parents so I used the set in a proper and responsible way, trying my best to set aside the possibilities. I wasn't going to blow the house (one vial wouldn't have been enough anyway😂).

Aside from those two examples I have very little memories of over gifts and I think it's better that way.

But I remember building the tree and making Christmas stuff, including meals, with my mother and my father smile when I opened the gifts... Those were nice times.

It just occurred to me that my $150 limit for big stupid expensive gifts...well. That means that every time I go grocery shopping it's just like Xmas. 

Don't remind me. The current food pricing is driving me bonkers.😈 Preparing a Christmas table like my parents did in the days of my childhood, it would cost at least $150 now and just for the evening, maybe with some leftovers for the day after.