The Christmas Program Season

As I write this, my church, as in the one that I work at, is preparing to do our annual Christmas Festival. As a technical type, I ask, "Why do we do this every year?"

It's 3 or 4 months of preparation, followed by 2 weeks of total chaos followed by a week of not seeing your family and seeing my volunteer team and co-workers too much.

Is the price of sacrifice away from our loved ones at this time of year too much?

I've worked Pageants big and small for almost 20 years now and the older I get, the more I feel that it's a waste of time, effort and resources. Every year, our Christmas Tree is late going up and even though we promised our boys last year, lights are still not up on the house. Our program is one week later this year and we have next to no shopping done and we'll try to jam everything into 3 or 4 days next week.

My wife considers this time of year a 4 letter word and I'm starting to agree with her.

It starts bad because her birthday is on the 23rd of November. Last year, Thanksgiving fell on the 23rd and this year, it was the Wednesday before. It goes downhill from there. She's in the dental lab business and it always seems that people who have had 11 months to have their teeth fixed, pick the first 2 weeks of December to get the work done.

For 11 months, she'll maybe work late 2 or 3 days in that entire period, but in December, She's late almost every night, which of course, add to our collective "good" mood.

Sorry, not too many uplifting comments tonight, but all will be better on Monday! The program is over Sunday night!