Looking for holiday spirit

Its the holiday time of year. Holidays are fun. They are supposed to be enjoyable. You are supposed to anticipate them. I am not sure I have much holiday spirit this year. It seems to be missing

Now I am not the religious type so telling me its about the birth of our savior will not too much for me. But I can appreciate the significance for others.

You can tell me its about Santa - I stopped believing the year I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw my parents putting gifts under the tree. Santa also had suspiciously familiar handwriting.

You can tell me its about gifts. I am at the age where the last thing I need is more stuff. I mean there are things I might secretly covet, light a big, counter top stand mixture, but I really do not have room for one and wouldn't use it often enough to really need one.

There are other things I want - like to lose that pesky 30 lbs or be healthy again. If you can figure a way to give me both of those and find a cure for cancer, I would be most appreciative. And don't forget world peace while you are at it.

Don't get me wrong on gifts, I will give and get some. For my family I have long been on the road of edible, home made items. None of them complain about that either.

My husband and I have stockings hung (including one for the cat so he doesn't feel left out - it does have two cans of cat food in it which he may or may not eat depending on his mood) that will fill up mysteriously. We will also give each other a few gifts but we don't over do it.

My brother will show up a few days after Christmas and we will have a second Christmas with gifts for my nieces and nephews. That will be a big chaotic meal and may even include a Festivus pole - but we haven't gotten very far in the planning.

Yesterday we were the recipients of a fair amount of holiday spirit. A good friend has an annual holiday party with a Yankee Swap which includes an astonishing amount of alcohol and sports gear. We ended up with a twelve pack and a bottle of wine and a non-winning scratch ticket. But we also had fun and had lots of Christmas cheer.

On Wednesday we will have a fancy Christmas dinner with my parents, aunt, uncle, sister, and brother in law. We will eat too much. There will be some alcohol consumed. We will toast to the holidays and missing family members. We may even attempt a Skype session with out of towners.

But we will not really exchange gifts. Because holiday spirit isn't really about commercialism to me. I feel sorry for the people who are running around today because they feel obliged to find something to purchase for great aunt Bertha who they haven't seen or heard from since last Christmas. A big fat credit card bill is not an important part of holiday spirit.

What I need to do in the meantime, is figure out when I can get to the grocery store to buy the necessary food to make a fancy meal for us and how to fit all of us at the dining room table. Somewhere there will be some holiday spirit, I am sure.