My New Favorite Holiday

After spending hours, upon hours sitting in my house wrapping presents I would like to officially declare the 4Th of July as my new favorite holiday! It is not that I do not love Christmas, but there are some very stressful things surrounding it:

1. Shopping, which should be an Olympic sport in my opinion, (one that I would be a gold medal winner in), is so hard during Christmas. My work schedule is four 10 hours days, Mon-Thurs. Whenever I go shopping, I prefer to go on Fridays when it is not so hectic. Alas, during Christmas even my sacred Fridays are not immune to the crazy shoppers that only come out every once and again. It took me almost two hours just to drive to my favorite shopping area the other night and it generally takes 45 minutes. I just can't handle this stress on my favorite sport!

2. It is very stressful when you are expected to be jolly, just because the commercials tell you to be that way. This Christmas not everything has been happy so I just can't get into the spirit of things. One of my close friends was recently diagnosed with cancer and having to watch her deal with things is very upsetting. I think the holidays are especially hard for anyone not having a perfect life. Even if you are perfectly healthy and are single, or married with no children you are made to feel that you are missing out on the full experience of the holidays.

3. My husband always gets out of helping me out during the holidays. Once he puts three strings of lights on the roof, he is done. He tells me, "Oh, I would help you decorate, but I don't do it as well". This excuse also works when it is time to wrap gifts. Once, he wrapped half of a box and didn't have enough paper to go all the way around. He was more than happy to leave it like that, because in his words, "There is some paper to tear off. They will get the point." I secretly think that he does these duties very poorly the first time, because he knows that I am perfectionist and will pull him from the job when he does it poorly! ;) He is not fooling me!

From this point on the 4Th of July will be my favorite holiday. How can you not love having a cook out with all of your friends, decorating everything with big blue and red stars, warm summer weather and fireworks? I still love you Christmas, but you are STRESSING me out!