Dear Tell All: What do you do when your husband is a grump about Christmas? He grouses about the commercialism, the music, the decorations, the "enforced" (his word) holiday cheer. He doesn't like feeling "required" to buy presents, even for me. And he claims he doesn't like getting them, either.
I used to put up with this before we had a child, even though I LOVE Christmas. It was always a big deal in my house growing up, and every year I looked forward to our family's rituals. I tried to make Christmas similarly fun for my husband the first year of our marriage, but I got the cold shoulder. For the next few years I continued to put up the Christmas tree and decorate the house, despite his protests, but he took a lot of the joy out of it for me.
Then came our daughter, who's now going on 3 - just old enough to understand how nice Christmas is. I'd love to make the holiday as special for her as it used to be for me, but my husband is already indicating his resistance. I'm feeling depressed about having to fight this battle, and I'm wondering if it's even worth it. It's hard to create Christmas cheer with hostility in the air.
Should I insist on doing Christmas right for my daughter? Should I capitulate to my husband? Or should I find some happy medium?
Noelle
Dear Noelle: Something tells me you won't have to capitulate or settle for a happy medium. I predict that when your husband sees how excited your daughter gets about Christmas, his cold heart will melt. Pretty soon he'll be the one insisting on more tinsel, more ornaments, more elaborate preparations for Santa's visit.
If this doesn't happen - if he's really so far gone that he can't appreciate a child's innocent joy around this time of year - then I think you might have an honest-to-goodness Scrooge on your hands. And barring a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, you might want to think long and hard about sticking with such a man.
