I have found a benefit to all the nuttiness of the holidays! It does not apply to everyone, but I thought I’d share for the folks who could take heart from my discovery.

For my family, this weekend was wildly busy. We had company Friday night, two dinners to attend Saturday (my husband went to one while I went to the other), and a birthday party Sunday. I also had to teach my final class of the fall semester on Saturday morning.

We were so busy, in fact, that until this morning, I had no time to wallow in sports misery.

And I had an awful sports weekend. Wanna see?

1. Indiana University (my undergrad alma mater) lost to Kentucky. Close game, though.
2. Butler University (my Master’s Degree) lost to Indiana State. Another close one, but I was so disappointed. Not only had Butler been having a stellar season up to this point, most of my family and friends are ISU alumni, so I’ll have to hear it all through the holidays.
3. Indiana Pacers got TROUNCED by Cleveland. And that idiot Stephen Jackson added to his already glowing reputation by getting kicked off the bench by the saintly patient Rick Carlisle. Jackson has GOT TO GO! He and Artest have ruined our team.
4. Indianapolis Colts, well, that was just embarrassing.

My only consolations were that my New York Giants won and New England was embarrassed by Miami almost as badly as Indy was by Jacksonville.

But the great thing was that I saw only snippets of all my sports tragedies. I caught a couple minutes of the IU/Kentucky game through the window of a sports bar as I was heading back to work after lunch. I saw only the final scores of the Butler/ISU game and the Pacers debacle. And I was chasing my kids around a birthday party on Sunday, so I just saw a few plays of that Colts /Jags nonsense.

So today, I sat down at the PC to check out the headlines, and in looking at the scoreboard, I realized what a cumulative disaster I had, happily, missed because I’d been too busy to watch much of it.

For once, I can honestly say, thank heavens for Christmas stress!

Every year around this time, I start rethinking my choice of religion.

It actually begins around Halloween when sadistic retailers begin putting out Christmas decorations in an attempt to entice shoppers into boosting lagging October sales. Seeing Christmas trees in October sends me into a panic attack. As a type-A person, I am always sure that I’ve forgotten something, that I’m missing something, that I’m behind. When all those yuletide trimmings start popping up, I am in an instant tizzy: Has everyone else started their shopping already?!

It just gets worse from there. My children see the trees and pictures of Santa and television commercials advertising holiday sales, and they start their Christmas begging. My parents and in-laws begin sending me e-mails and calling me to find out what is on everyone’s wish lists. Every friend and acquaintance I have suddenly needs to put an event on my calendar. There are decorations to be hung, cards to be sent, parties to attend, cookies to bake, and dinners to prepare.

And there’s all the silly little things that shouldn’t matter, but they do because Christmas comes only once a year. See, we have all this stuff, and it’s stuff that we have to use in the month of December because using it in May or June would be weird and/or depressing. First, there’s clothes and jewelry - Santa sweatshirts, snowflake sweaters, red and green plaid skirts and blazers, jingle bell earrings. I have to go through my closet and pull out all these items to make sure I wear them or they’ll just sit for another year, collecting dust. Then there are books to read, especially Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” my all-time favorite book that I have read every year since I was about 10. 

Finally, there are CD’s, MP3’s, videos and DVD’s. I have to hunt down all my music and movies that we must listen to or watch now or wait another year. And the collection is getting ridiculous, especially the movies: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “White Christmas,” “A Christmas Story,” “Elf,” “Mickey’s Christmas Carol,” “Rudolph,” “Frosty,” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

There’s just one other thing that makes my Christmas less than merry. The imbalance between what my female friends and I are doing and what my husband, my father and their guy friends are doing to prepare for the holidays. Don’t get me wrong: my husband and my dad are both wonderful men, and I adore them. But when they say, “Why are you so stressed? Everything will be fine even if you don’t get all that stuff done,” I want to scream! They do little, if any, shopping, wrapping and cooking. If it were up to them, no cards would be sent, no decorations would be hung (except maybe the outside lights which is their responsibility, but they have to be hounded into putting them up). Christmas would be like any other day. So how can they wonder why I’m stressed? Do they really think everything would be just fine even if all their women did nothing to prepare? Argh.

So now it’s two weeks before Christmas, and I’m only about a third done with shopping. I have two dinners I have to attend tonight, so I’ll be leaving one early to get to the other one late. My son is attending two parties and throwing another one at our house. We ordered our Christmas cards online two weeks ago, but they haven’t arrived yet, so I’ll be rushing to get those out the minute they come in. Yet another joyful, peaceful, relaxing holiday season.

If it weren’t for Jesus being such a great guy who deserves a really great birthday, I think I’d go Buddhist. At least for the month of December.