Do you ever feel like the good tidings and cheer literally get sucked out of your ho ho ho holiday spirit by being nickeled and dimed to death? I'm involved in a few groups... church, 2 MOPS groups, playgroup, a mom's league, scouts, preschool, elementary school, children, family, santa... so lets break it down...
1. church -- of course you should give with a grateful and thankful heart to your church and your God. This one goes without thinking. The church, of course, has their outreach ministries that provide for the less fortunate during this time of year.
2. MOPS group #1 - Christmas party with gift exchange ($10-15) and food... doing a food drive for a food pantry... gift collection for a mom that has experienced a really hard year
3. MOPS group #2 - Christmas party with gift exchange - and our group was to provide the beverages for the next meeting
4. playgroup - Christmas party with nice gift exchange ($10-15 for gift) plus $10-15 for catering fee
5. Mom's League - Christmas party with the kids... fundraiser angel tree for needy children (last time I received an angel from this tree -- it was for an older child who asked for a Nintendo Gameboy DS, a computer and ... I forget the brand label of coat but it was well, over $100 for just the coat... the gameboy DS was $150 and a computer..?? I mean.. get outta town kid!)
6. You've got your christmas cards and depending on where you get those they're anywhere from 90 cents to $2 each plus 41 cents postage per card
7. You get a Christmas card with your paper and a preprinted return envelope from the carrier ... ??? didn't you ELECT to deliver papers?
8. Preschool - Christmas party for kids with gift exchange, provide some food, gifts for both his teachers
9. Elementary school - Christmas party for class, gift for teacher, the school is organizing some kind of teacher holiday lunch and they're wanting 21 people to bake 4 dozen cookies each so the teachers can have a cookie exchange to take home with them... I won't even bake that much for MY family... and asking for some people to buy cactus for the centerpieces (no idea what that's about) and something else... oh, they need volunteers to man the room for 2 hours or so so that the teachers can go attend the lunch... the school is also having a toy drive for the community storehouse and some kind of other financial donation-driven drive
10. Scouts - they're having a toy drive
11. Santa - yes, we have to provide those few gifts from the guy in red which puts an added burden on the Christmas budget
12. Family - you want to provide a little something to family (grandparents and children that are in immediate family) to let them know you're thinking of them...
13. Add on top of that all the requests for financial donations at this time of year that ocme in the mail... it just get completely overwhelming...
Please tell me I'm not the only one that has the guilt of wanting to help people but... since I let the "guilt" get to me... I jsut said no to a lot of the extra-cir. things this year... no christmas parties with gift exchanges that are for "MY" benefit. Does anyone else jsut feel like you get continually nickeled and dimed to death?
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