Let the madness end

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is madness. I disremember who said this first, but it is rarely more true than during those frantic, food-loaden last two months of the year.
There we are, having spent ten months of the year (hopefully) watching our budgets and our food intake. Our waists have shrunk, our bank accounts have, while not fattened up, at least recovered a bit from last December's low. Toys, gadgets and trinkets bought last Black Friday have, predictably, given up the ghost simultaneously with the expiration of their warranties and gone on (again, hopefully) to cease cluttering our lives.
And then come along...The Holidays.
And with them that heady mixture of "I was so good all year, I deserve a reward" and "it's a holiday, and on holidays one does eat certain foods, and gives each other lots of presents".
So we find ourselves in the middle of the Black Friday melee again, clutching our shopping-bags full of loot that was payed for with our credit cards, or sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table having to open our belts and grabbing for the Maalox (tm).
Of course, it doesn't stop there. We go on like that all the way through Christmas, gorging ourselves and shopping as if stores went out of business, without a thought about our scales or bank balances.
Six weeks of free-for-all.
Except it isn't free.
Do you remember what it felt like last January? Going on the scales for the first post-holiday weigh-in? Opening that horrifying credit card bill?
Feel that pain now. Remember it as vividly as you can.
Remember how long it has taken you to undo the damages, if you even managed to undo them at all.
And then decide if you want that again.
Remember- the holidays are not about consumption. They are about people.
When you look back at your childhood, what do you remember about Christmases past? What presents you got? Or do you remember going sleighing with your parents, or sitting in front of the open fireplace playing Scrabble (tm) with your siblings?
What do you want your kids to remember, or yourself if you don't have any?

You decide.
Decide wisely.


Julia