I love the holidays....no really!

Okay, so from my last entry, you might get the impression that I don't enjoy the holidays. But that's not really true. I love the holidays. I'm just not very good at the whole holiday "thing."

I'm not the domestic kind of chick. I mean, I keep my house maintained at an acceptable level of cleanliness, but I'm just not really concerned with eradicating every last dust bunny and bacteria from my living space. When I was growing up, my Mom kept a clean house without the use of antibacterial soap and wipes and sprays. And we all survived.

Then there are all the other feminine pursuits of domesticity that take such a central role in the holidays - the cooking, the decorating, the gift wrapping. I hate to cook. I'm really not that good at it. But it's probably because I'm supremely not interested in doing it. It's just not fun to me. I mean, I do cook for my family, I'm not an ogre about it or anything. And most of the time, it's edible, but it's never anything mind-blowing.

I caught an episode of Martha Stewart once and endured about three minutes of condescending prattle about how easy and fulfilling it was to prepare...well, whatever the hell she was preparing. She mentioned that it was only an hour's worth of preparation...but of course, it would look so easy on TV when you have people to do all the shopping, selecting, chopping, dicing, measuring, gathering, etc. before you walk int the room to throw it all together. It takes me an hour just to get everything together that I need to START cooking. Then there's all that aforementioned chopping, slicing and sauteeing. By the time I'M finished with a meal like that, I'm covered in whatever I'm cooking, have three burned fingers, and a kitchen that looks like a bomb hit it - every pot, pan and utensil I own strewn about on every available surface, dripping various parts of the dish all over the stove, counters, floor, sink, refrigerator and sometimes even the ceiling. And then my family doesn't really like it anyway.

So yeah, cooking is just way down on my list of life's priorities. I should own stock in Pizza Hut and my local Chinese delivery.

The decorating? Another thing I'm just really not that "into." I love the look and the feeling an elegantly-decorated home imbues. I mean, I love looking at it and experiencing it. But again, not being good at that kind of thing, it takes an entire weekend of back-breaking work to exhume all the decorations from the basement, garage and attic - go through it, untangling garland and lights from last year and figuring out where it's all supposed to go.

Then of course, there's the gift-wrapping - for me a hellish several hours of back-breaking wrangling, and paper cuts. And after all the time you put in making the gifts look so special, they don't really get a cursory glance before the ripping and shredding begins. Overall, a holiday prerequisite I could just do without.

While all this could probably be construed as pure laziness, that's not strictly true. Yes, I admit to being a somewhat lazy creature overall, but my aversion to decorating is actually rooted in the (miniscule) part of my brain dedicated to practicality. Seriously, it's just a LOT of time, work, and financial resources poured into decorative trappings that the retail industry has evolved over time to part our hard-earned cash from our wallets.

So all that said, what DO I like about the holidays? I love the gathering of family and friends. I love the good-will that many people find in themselves around the holidays. I love the excitement and wonder in childrens' eyes. It's all the warm FEELINGS that the holidays invoke that I enjoy. All the material stuff just really isn't that important to me. It's the people, the sharing, the charity and the uniting of humanity in a common cause of goodness that I really love. Something I wish we could hold on to long after the last pine needles are vacuumed from the corners.

I really do love the holidays. And I sincerely hope that this year, you rediscover the mystery, the wonder and the awe that is pure love.

Happy Holidays from the Rubber Room!