Goodbye commercialiZed christmas, hello stress free christmas

Christmas is only a couple days away and as a mom of nine, an aunt to three and a grandmother to one wrapping gifts wears me out, not to mention making sure I don't forget anyone can get stressful. Counting gifts and making sure no one got more or less is a very important thing to me, the last thing I want is for one of my precious little angels to think Santa favoured one over the other.
But in all honesty the way we commercialize Christmas now a days stresses me out so much. Christmas is supposed to be about family and friends, about homemade gifts, singing carols, and giving. Not about how many toys we receive, how much we spent on gifts or how far in debt we can get ourselves.
These so called "Hot Toy" lists are created not only to suck money out of our pockets, but are created to manipulate our children into believing that's the only toy they want and so as a parent who wants to please their child they go crazy trying to get this one particular toy even if it means spending hundreds of dollars for a toy they will only show interest in for a few days. Our society has become so commercialized that our houses are full of items that were a want but useless to our everyday needs. Items tend to sit on shelves and collect dust, get thrown in boxes and forgotten about and some are sold at yard sales for not even half the original cost. We are going into debt trying to please people and half of them really don't even give a damn, we have become commercialized and I have had enough!
This Christmas I ended up spending more then I anticipated and as I wrap everything I say to myself WHY? Why did I let myself get caught up in the commercialization that I hate so much, well not again. My children have everything they could ever want, I have a 30 foot trailer full of toy totes that we rotate through (No I am Not kidding you!) And so this is officially our final commercialized Christmas!
Next year while all the other parents are running frantically from store to store finding that perfect gift I will be at home with my feet up reading a good book and enjoying my stress-less Christmas. My children will receive a book, clothing and something special but it won't be next years hottest toy and it won't be purchased from a big box store, it will be either hand made or bought locally. It will be a tradition I should have started long ago and one many others should try to start as well.
So starting today....okay let's say starting December 26th just to be accurate, my house will be a commercialized free zone. No more commercialized Christmas for this momma!