In Reply To:
I have some holiday man rage, fortunately, it is not against my husband (this year). A bunch of my friends have young kids and several husbands have decided that gift buying and decorating is a waste of time and money and it's all about consumerism. I had one friend tell me that she would have to go buy their Christmas tree, haul it into the house and set it up because her husband didn't think it was necessary.
They have a 5 year old that is so excited to decorate trees, she came over to our house and decorated ours with us, she was over for several hours watching holiday shows, drinking cocoa and helping us decorate. We were happy to provide good memories for her surrounding the holidays but after a while I started getting angry at the husbands because here's something they don't seem to understand: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU! How convenient to be the Grinch and refuse to participate but ultimately, you lose because you missed the opportunity to bond with family and friends when you stand around complaining instead of participating.
It didn't help that right before the holidays one of my friends told me her husband thinks diamond wedding rings represent consumerism and status and that he decided he was never getting her a ring but oh he had the time and money to go buy a Ninetendo Wii. Men in the northwest have this whole granola angle they are trying to work but I'm onto it!
With four boys in my family and four sets of in-laws the holidays can be a mess or I should say "they have been a mess." We have finally gotten to the point where we have children in the households again (unfortunately Susie (wife) and I have not been fortunate enough to have our own), and it was really important to us to make Christmas special for them. Kids are a special thing to us - to continue with your rant, I wish their parents would take it as serious as we do. None the less, we did everything we could to provide amazing memories for them and we hope they pass such memories on to their children (or in our case nieces and nephews).
To go on and to balance what I am reading people say; for a lot of people it has become lazy, others it has become greedy or economical, and then there is some that still remember Christmas through the memories of events and spending time with loved ones. Susie and I spoil our nieces and nephews but feel that the best Christmas present we give them is the environment and memories from a warm and loving family.
"your horse is too high" - tigerchik