Winter Solstice/ Christmas/ Xmas/ Saturnalia/ Holidays ...

it's that time of year again isn't it?  The time when I have to explain to people why I'm a bit of a grinch etc.

I'm an atheist so I don't like to call Christmas 'Christmas'. Afterall the origins of this period have nothing to do with 'Christ'.  However I am not 'anti- Christianity' or any other religion for that matter, I have great respect for peoples' beliefs (although I reserve the right to pick holes in them whenever I can find them!) but what I hate is the amount of people who are professing to be Christian yet using this holiday to max out credit cards and buy lots of tosh, behave like greedy pigs and act definitely non-Christian.

I love this time of year because I get a couple of weeks off work, there's an abundance of mulled wine around and I see my family.  On the other hand I find it immensely stressful - yesterday we took the boy into town to see Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park.  It was RAMMED and so very very expensive.  I really don't understand how people with a couple of kids afford this time of year.  All the mobile phone shops had queues outside them and we popped into Harrods (the boy had never been in there) and it was so full that we had to leave.

When I was a child my parents had very little money.  Christmas must have been a very difficult time for them, I wish I'd understood because I usually asked for so much (with page numbers from the catalogues!).  The two Christmases I remember the most were both 'handmade' though. 

When I was four I desperately wanted a Tiny Tears doll so my parents got me one.  However the next year I wanted to put her in a cot etc.  So, along with my grandfather, they made me a cot out of recycled wood they had around the house.  My mum made the mattress and bedding out of stuff we had around the house too.  It was the best cot ever and I loved it.

A few years later I'd grown out of Tiny Tears and I'd moved onto Sindy.  I loved my Sindy doll:

http://www.sindy-collectables.com/index.cfm?articleid=1776

 

 

 

and I wanted a house for her.  My parents had looked at the Sindy houses on offer and thought they were terrible.  Cheap and nasty.  So what did they do?  They made me one.  The most amazing dolls house ever.  It was stunning.  I really must hunt out the photographs and share them one day because it truly was stunning.  Along with that, my mum created a 'Princess Diana' wedding dress for my Sindy too - WOW!  I loved that house, that dress and that Christmas.  Because my parents had really created something amazing, something that nobody else had.  And it was all handmade.

This year I've already got my present from Mr BL.  We found it yesterday - a G-Plan dressing table.  We had to snap it up when we saw it - £50!!!!! WHAT?  BARGAIN.  I've been after a G-Plan dressing table for ages but they're anything upwards of £150. 
It's quite similar to this:

 

Although it has a cupboard to the right, not drawers. 

It's being delivered next Saturday - SO excited.  I've never had a dressing table in my life - and now I've got a G-Plan one! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.  I've asked for nothing from my family.  They are currently skint and there's nothing I really want so I've told my mum to just go in the loft and hunt out all my old Ladybird books - I'll have them!

I don't want anyone to feel pressured.  It's a horrid feeling and I don't want anyone to feel that.  I'd rather make a fuss of people on their birthdays!

What do you think?  Am I being a grinch?