I'm bummed!!! I wrote a nice big story about my holiday changes for next year and I hit a button that erased it all!!! *sigh* Well, I guess in a round about way that's just as well since now nobody has to listen to me being bitter and I can just get right down to the point. ^_~

One of the holiday issues that I have, other than the dinner issues that I talked about before, have to do with gifts. My family look at the Christmas holiday as an occasion to out-do everyone financially by buying bigger and better gifts than everyone else. It's just a big contest of commerce. It makes me nuts. Last year my husband and I were not in a financial position to buy gifts since we're estimated our finances wrong with our move to California. My Mom knew this but didn't like it. Everyone still sent us little presents and gifts from home since we couldn't be in Connecticut for the holidays. So when the time started to come for this year's holiday shopping I got a huge lecture from my Mom about how we needed to basically make up for last year's no-show with gifts this year. This pissed me off for a number of reasons but one was the fact that my Mom knows that we are in the process of paying off an $8,000 debt from moving home and trying to get caught up on bills that we fell behind on when we were living in California. Yet, that doesn't matter to her, gifts are important, she says, and many people "were hurt" that we didn't do gifts last year. My family isn't religious and there has never been any spiritual aspect to this holiday for them, it's always been about gifts, money, food and attempting to impress the side of the family that happens to be well off (they're all doctors and CEOs and whatnot and my Mom has this thing with always trying to impress them somehow because they have money and she doesn't...we aren't close with that side of the family because of my Mom's jealousy issues and it irritates me but that's irrelevant).

So I've decided that next year I'm not getting gifts again, not traditional gifts anyway. Everyone instead will become a foster parent for a rescued farm animal at the Animal Place sanctuary in California. They take in farm animals that are abandoned or unwanted and are cared for on the farm. They do educational programs and promote cruelty free living and veganism. For $25 you can be a foster parent to an animal on the farm and you get a certificate of adoption, a wallet sized foster parent card, a calendar for the year and their quarterly newsletter from the farm. Next year, rather than me spending money on stupid things like DVDs and gift cards to Target the money I would be spending will go to a cause worthwhile and to exemplify the purpose of the holiday season while doing something good for the animals and supporting a pro-vegan organization.

Suck on that Mom! ^_^