A Different Kind of Christmas, Much the Same

When I left Big Brown to go green earlier this year, one of the things I looked forward to most was Christmas. As you can imagine, working for a package delivery company during Christmas doesn’t exactly allow much time to really enjoy the season. Which was a real shame for me because for many ever-evolving reasons, Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. Over the last four Christmases I crammed all of my shopping into one or two evenings or a spare Saturday here or there – extremely efficient, but not very jolly. It was especially tough for me because I actually enjoy wandering around, bouncing from store to store and mall to mall trying to find the perfect gift. Instead I would find myself scrounging through empty shelves, looking for the last cheap no-thought-to-it novelty gift.

One thing I always counted on, however, was being able to excuse my last minute shopping with “Well I’ve been so busy ensuring the timely delivery of other people’s packages, I didn’t have time to shop for my own”. And so this year when I realized this Christmas would be like no other I had experienced the last four years, I got very excited. I even picked out the weekend when I would do my shopping – December 11th – 13th. It would be perfect. I’d have Friday off to wander and wonder, Saturday to swipe and spend, and Sunday to cleanup any last minute leftovers. And then disaster struck. I woke up lazy on Friday and lame (as in loser, not broken) on Saturday. I spent most of the day Sunday doing the various other things on my list that I was going to slide into Friday and Saturday. And thus, I found myself on my knees at the feet of Bezos begging for cheap enough prices to offset 2-Day shipping. I made three weeknight trips to Bulls-Eye this week, walking out with gifts on two of three nights and nothing on the middle night. Tonight I scratched the final recipient off my list, though I still have one stocking stuffer to buy and one check-in-a-card to write (oh shoot, I have to buy a card – why is it I could buy my dad a BMW and the first thing he would ask is where is the card?).

Although it’s not like those years I found myself closing down stores on Christmas Eve, in relative terms it might as well be. I’ll have to come up with a better plan for next year, but until then I’m going to enjoy my day and a half off until Christmas. In the event that I don’t find my way to the keyboard before then, Merry Christmas everyone!

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:10-11