Can you allready smell it? The air is getting clear and cold, its rainy and foggy outside in the morning and sometimes in the evening, leafs are falling to the ground and make it damn slippery and of course: everybody starts talking about Christmas.

You know for sure what follows: the whole "What give I to whom as gift, where do we celebrate and where is the strongest eggnog to survive the whole crap?"

Christmas. It was just wandering in my mind and to be honest, i dont really look forward to it. As a child christmas was awesome! Gifts, sweets and everything. Great. I think you agree.
It had something special about it, it was somehow magical.

Now I am grown up and what is christmas now? It is pure stress. Espacially for a heathen like me, I cant flee into religion and say "Christmas is about the birth of J C and not about presents" No. I have to be more realistic.
Its all about presents.
You HAVE to be ready to give some people you like presents, you HAVE to think of something and you HAVE to buy it. Its not a matter of choice, its a matter of tactics. I once got something from a friend and was totally surprised, because it was a very nice present and i liked it. But I had nothing to give. And that person was pretty disappointed. I felt bad, so i started to make deals, "If you give me something, I'll give you something" works well, you have a plan then, but still is a bit stressful.

But why do we take all this stress, why do we make the holiday that is about good will to all men and about friendship a personal hell?

I think we should stop that, take some time, say no to consuming and remember what christmas is about. maybe... MAYBE then in a few years Chocolate Santas will be in stores in December again and not in August...

EDIT: I fixed some grammar mistakes, bad literacy is DEFINATELY not cool... my apologies!