What is the easiest part of the Christmas holidays for you? The hardest part?

The easiest is being away from home so I don’t feel pressured to visit people and do things I don’t want to. The hardest is being poor and not being able to do what I want to do.

The easiest for me is the shopping and decorating. I like to cook and I do most of the family holiday dinners.

The thing I hate hate hate is gift wrapping!! I dread it so much and it usually takes me one whole day. I do use some of those Christmas shopping bag things but I still want wrapped presents under the tree.

I remember when my grown daughter was around 12 years old. she loved to wrap presents. once a few days before Christmas I took out all her gifts in unlabeled boxes and watched her as she wrapped her own gifts. I stood guard so she wouldn’t look in any of the gift boxes.

we still laugh about that all these years later.

The food is the easiest. We go to a flashy hotel and have a beautiful breakfast as a family and for dinner, we all bring something yummy to eat. We used to do the full turkey dinner thing but we got fed up with it and when we started going out for brekkie, we found we’re not that hungry by dinnertime, so we just keep dinner very light. As a bonus, nobody spends hours in the kitchen and we all share the washing up.

Like @BeenThereSaidThat, I hate wrapping. I know some people love it but it’s not something I find fun and I always seem to be there on Christmas Eve wrapping.

The easiest? Putting up the one wreath above the fire place in lieu of a tree.

The hardest is not having the money we need. I haven’t bought one single gift yet. I don’t know what to do.

@BeenThereSaidThat One year I found a cool piece of a limb. It flat on one side. I got the idea to make a pencil holder for my dad for Christmas. All I needed to do was drill holes in it. Problem was, I wasn’t allowed to use the drill. So I had my dad drill the holes.
He got the biggest kick out of it when he opened his present from me!

The hardest part for me is having to work full time and being so busy in December, and then it’s like all of a sudden, it’s Christmas. I read magazines and enjoy looking at the perfectly wrapped presents and ideas for creative wrapping, the beautifully baked cookies and holiday foods, the wonderfully decorated rooms, and the people dressed nicely writing cards by the fireplace. That is never reality for me. When I take time off, after Christmas, doing all those things doesn’t matter any more.

I suck at wrapping presents. They always look like Charlie Brown presents. I’m great at funny gag gifts. One year I made my vegetarian BIL a gift. I put a little potting soil in a 4X4 plastic tin and planted grass seed in it. It grew in nice and lush. He laughed like hell. He was still laughing about that this past Summer when we met at a wedding.

Cooking is easy, I love to make food, can whip up a yummy dinner with ease.
My shopping is minimal since I divorced, don’t miss the chaos of shopping for 17 people at all. I love wrapping too and the best part is watching my 2 cats rip around in the wrapping paper. My little siamese girl LOVES tissue paper, she has her purple tissue paper all over my bedroom right now.

Dives into it, unde it, leaps up and shreds it, flings it all around. Great pussy fun! haha

I just remembered the hardest thing. Sending cards. I always buy the dratted things and then don’t get around to sending them. I have boxes of the stupid things that I’ve not got around to sending.

Right now I’ve been doing the cards at work. I got them printed a week ago, but was so busy at work and home that I just didn’t have time. In a perfect world I’d be doing them by the fireplace on a Sunday afternoon, sipping cocoa, but that’s never happening, at least until I retire haha.

The hardest thing for me is being so far (3,000 miles) from extended family during the holidays.

The easiest thing is enjoying Christmas music.

Easiest: Enjoying it.
Hardest: I can’t wrap shit up if my life depended on it.

The easiest part is that I have simplified what I do and do not go crazy with gift buying. Also, I helped decorate the UU Earth room for Christmas yesterday and enjoyed that.

The hardest part this year is that I will not be with any of my family members on the holidays, although I did have them all in for Thanksgiving.

The easiest part is the gift wrapping, a lot of gifts just get put into pretty gift bags and the ones I wrap have to be done to perfection, I enjoy wrapping gifts. The hardest part is Christmas Day itself, we often have to gather before or after Christmas due to work schedule conflicts, there are 2 nurses in the family.

The planning is hardest. Who to include, and to what extent – annoying. I’m sure cards would bother me a lot, if I wrote any more than the one I send to my grandma.

I enjoy the gift ordering for the most part, and I love the baking, waiting, and even the wrapping with good music.

I’m feeling christmassy early this year :]

Early? We only got 9 days left!

^ I’ve been feeling christmassy for at least two weeks, and last year I wasn’t in the right spirit until Christmas Eve :)

This year, 2014, Thanksgiving was late and there were only 3 weekends till Christmas. That made the whole Christmas season go by so quickly. I had a big work party to attend on both weekends in December, and the third weekend is a local neighborhood party, so having those 3 milestones on the 3 Saturdays really gave me little time for else.

The easiest part is not having to get up early to go to work!

The hardest part is the depression that comes with the holidays for me. Sadly I don’t enjoy this time of year.

I also struggle financially so it’s sad that I can’t buy the ones I love the gifts I would like to buy them.

@OpryLeigh I’m with you on the first two. This season is especially hard this year.

@janbb In that case I will definitely be thinking of you this Christmas Day!