All I Want for Christmas

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It is festive with all the snow on the ground, decorations galore and Christmas music on the radio. I must admit that I am not feeling it. We still have crops out in the fields and cows that need those crops to be harvested so they can graze those fields. I am afraid it just isn’t going to feel much like Christmas until we get all the work done. That alone is really bumming me out because I really love everything about Christmas and the season.

Of course, those Christmas decorations really have nothing to do with the season, most of the retail stores put their Christmas displays up sometime after the Fourth of July. No, most years, the Christmas Season starts after Thanksgiving, or at lest it does for me. I like to enjoy my holidays one at a time and I refuse to move the timeline up. This year has everything discombobulated. Normally, my goal is to have the cows and the sheep in their winter resting spots by Thanksgiving. Instead I spent Thanksgiving afternoon on the combine. An interesting side note to this is that I have never felt better the evening of Thanksgiving than I did this year.

In any case I am feeling just a little bit stressed (that is an understatement) lately and the weather gives me the hives. I know we are all wishing for a white Christmas but a week of sixty-degree temperatures would be the top of my Christmas list this year. I don’t want to seem greedy but two weeks or even three would be best, but I would settle for one week of warm, dry weather. I don’t think that is too much to ask for.

It is that time of the year when I am asked for my Christmas wish list. It is also this time when I realize I have reached the point in my life where Christmas gifts just aren’t that important. Yes, I have become my parents. I remember the frustration of asking Mom and Dad what they wanted for Christmas and getting the response of “nothing”. I tell my kids that I really don’t need anything and what I want, you can’t afford. But just in case, a new tractor, pickup or combine would be at the top of my list.

I guess I have gotten to the point in my life where if I need something, I go get it and that makes my wish list to Santa Claus much more abstract. Let me give you some examples. I already shared my number one wish and that was for dry, warm weather. If anyone knows how to make that happen, I would be eternally grateful. I don’t need much, just the nice fall days I was shorted around the end of October and the beginning of November. I bet that would be a popular gift with the farmer and rancher types this year.

I would also like a decent price for my crops. I am not going all out and asking for fifteen-dollar beans and seven-dollar corn just a little something above the cost of production would be nice. If that happens, we can knock the new tractor, combine and truck off my list. If I could make a little money, I could buy them myself. Just this week I had some work done on my house, the carpenter joked that he would like to be paid like a farmer. I said, sure, you owe me a hundred bucks.

Next on my list would be things that worked like they should, started when I wanted them to and tires that held air. Really, I don’t think that is too much to ask. To go along with that I would like my animals to cooperate, little things like staying where I put them and not getting sick. Those all seem like simple things on my list to Santa Claus, hopefully the old guy can come through with them.

My Christmas wish list can be summed up by three things. I want good weather, good markets and good luck. Maybe that list with a new tractor, combine and truck doesn’t sound so daunting after all compared to the three things farmers and ranchers have absolutely no control over.  We aren’t hard to buy for, we are impossible to please.

Call me the Grinch but I will continue to sit here in the glow of our Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate, listening to Christmas music but not really in the mood. I guess all I really want for Christmas is to be caught up. Its funny but my whole family agrees as to what they want, a father/husband who is not so whiny. Let’s hope we all get what we want.