Don’t Send Grand Parents with Little Children Out Shopping Today

It’s official. Thursday as the day that Christmas falls on is the worst possible day. What? You say. It has got to be the best. You get to take a really long weekend after Christmas. No! I say. And here is my reasoning and evidence.

With Christmas on a Thursday, kids get out of school on the Friday before Christmas. That means you have six whole days before Santa comes with kids losing their minds waiting to see if they made it on to the good or the naughty list. With each passing day out of school they are inching further and further off the right list and closer to the switches and coal.

Why would this affect me? I don’t have a little child who is worried about such things. She is not bugging me every fifteen minutes about how much longer it is until Santa comes. Let me continue.

With Christmas on Thursday Grandparents from far off started arriving at their grandchildren’s homes on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday. By today, Tuesday the parents of said grandchildren are losing their minds with so many extra mouths to feed in the house and well-intentioned in-laws to find activities to do with them that don’t cause any fights.

Now that Christmas is two days away the serious cooking of Christmas Eve roast and Christmas Day goose is really ramping up. What do parents with little children and visiting grandparents do to try and get ahead on all this cooking, as well as present wrapping and laundry washing, and mother-in-law pacifying? Send the Grandparents out to the store with all the kids in tow so that the mother can have a few moments of silence since her husband had escaped to work since it is only Tuesday. Again, you wonder why I care about this?

Here is why Thursday is the worst day for Christmas and why it affects me so much. Every food store, from Costco to Fresh Market are filled with very, very old people, dragging very, very young people around stores they are completely unfamiliar with. These familial groups walk five abreast aimlessly up and down aisles of stores they have never been in before looking for ingredients they have never heard of all in the name of some mother finding an excuse to get them out of the house.

These people are already a little sick of each other, though they would never admit that, but you can tell by the way they ignore bad behavior from the littlest child who is throwing a fit in front of the 1000 piece-six foot-long Barbie extravaganza. No peppermint is pulled from a grannies pocket to pacify her little darling. No, just an eye roll and a flick to the hearing aid, turning down the volume just a bit. “Hey Grandma, We all don’t have that hearing aid option.”

It seems like Costco could open early for regular customers so we don’t have to fight those who are just using the store as entertainment. There could be a test at the front door where you would have to identify exactly what part of the store held the Kirkland toilet paper, how many apples came in the Granny Smith Apple ballistic plastic container and how much an executive membership card cost. Only real and true-hard customers could pass the test and be allowed in to shop unaccompanied so as not to block up the aisles with unnecessary onlookers.

Next year with Christmas on Friday is not going to be much better, but maybe Grandparents will have learned that five days before Santa arrives is just too long to spend in their daughter-in-law’s home. It is best to show up on Christmas Eve when everyone is still excited and you will be a novelty to help distract small children from the big event. Or if Grand parents do come to visit, offer to stay home and do the cooking and send the shopping experts out into the world alone.