Attack of the Christmas Beast

Well gang, it's coming down to go-time. The Christmas season is upon us, and - if you're a department store or the Dollar General by our house - it has been since, oh, late August or so.


We here at the Houghs always try and hold back the Christmas Beast as long as we can, lest we get sick of Santas and Christmas Trees and all things Yule well ahead of December 25th. This year was no exception, but - and I take full responsibility for this - we caved a little early this year. Usually, we put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving (the day commonly referred to as 'African American Friday'), but this year we threw it up a week early.

'Cause we're suckers.

While I will take the majority of the blame for this early pounce on 'the season fo' pleasin',' I think Home Depot and my school should incur some, small degree of accountability. My school gives us a full week of vacation for Thanksgiving. That's right, a full week. This means that as the holiday fervor begins to rise to a boil, Yours Truly is sitting around a non-decorated house, feeling the Christmas Beast breathe down his neck. The last two years, I've put up the interior house decorations the week leading up to Thanksgiving, with the tree itself going up the following day. As was to be the plan this year, too.

Home Depot had other plans.

Now, since we've been married, Kris and I have had to get by with a 6 ft, artificial Christmas tree that we picked up at Family Dollar. We have to string the lights on ourselves, and every year it just looks like pure hell. Seriously.

Remember Charlie Brown's sad, little Christmas tree? Remember that.

Yup.

Anyway, every year I declare I'm going to acquire a new, pre-lit Christmas tree, and every year it doesn't happen. Either they're too expensive or else we can't find anything worth getting (as was the case last year). This year, though, we found an early Black Friday special at Home Depot - a multi-colored, 7 1/2 ft., full-sized, Aspen spruce. Lots of tips, lots of lights, and retailing for $200... but we got it for $120.

Seeing how we had this awesome tree sitting in a box in our living room, we said 'what the hell' and threw the damn thing up early. 'Tis the season. The Cannonball loved the whole process of putting up the tree, and we had our parents oh hand via Skype, so it was a good time. Of course, we had to set up the tree so that all the hard-to-break, crappy, cheap ornaments were towards the bottom of the tree, and in the kids' reach, while the over-priced, Hallmark ornaments were higher up and safe from inquisitive fingers

Now, while decorating and Yule-spreading is frowned on before Thanksgiving, gift-getting and holiday shoppitude is most certainly not. No, the Houghs start buying Christmas gifts in late October/early November... because we're really, really smart.

Who the hell waits until December to start buying gifts for people? Seriously?! Why face those throngs of morons and crowds of 'crap, I gotta find this!' shoppers in malls and department stores, when one can easily just sit at home and purchase gifts online via Amazon or Target or eBay or what-have-you?

This year, we started picking out things for our daughters via Amazon, and began whittling away at those gifts in October. As of now, we're 100% done with Christmas shopping for the girls. Completely. If there's anything left to pick up, it'll be an impulse buy Kris picks up on African American Friday (because, being completely insane, she's still insisting on going out and braving the hordes at 4am).

Alayna was, by far, the easier of the two kids to shop for. Abby's more or less getting the money we'd otherwise be spending on buying her more toys deposited directly into her savings account. She has all of Alayna's mountain of old toys to play with, and there's really nothing she needs from us.

The Cannonball, however, is getting to an age where the toys we buy for her need to be more complex and challenging. Since Kris and I are both teachers, we really push reading, writing, and drawing with her, so I put some research into the highest quality toys available on the market that could assist her in further developing her reading and writing skills (phonetics, grammar, composition, etc.).

What we decided to buy her this year for her main gift was the Fisher Price iXL Learning System. Think of it as an iPad for toddlers. You can download various software programs onto it, you can upload your own mp3 audio files, your own pictures, and custom design the interface to fit your kid's personality. It's an e-reader, a hand-held gaming system, and mp3 player, and a picture-viewer all-in-one. You can draw, practice writing, listen to jams, view pictures, play games, and read books using a stylus and touch-screen.

If it sounds like I'm trying to sell this thing, it's because I seriously think this is the coolest kid's toy I've ever seen. If you're interested in learning more, check it out yourself. I'd highly recommend it for your own kids if they're gentle with electronics (Alayna's uses Kris' iPod Touch all the time and is knows how to handle and use it).

In closing, we're going home to Michigan this year for Christmas, and are once again making the 1300-mile trek via Tactical Family Transport Vehicle (i.e. 'mini-van'). We'll keep you posted as we develop our plans regarding this most perilous of ventures.

Stay tuned.

- Brian