Walking Backwards

I think today I may have discovered the busiest shopping destination of the season. It's where all the women are flocking to in order to fill up their baskets and lay down their hard earned money. I saw people fighting in the aisles, every cashier was overrun, and the clientele kept streaming in the door. Where was this bastion of holiday consumerism, this monument to the spending jubilee of the season? Why the fabric store, of course! I know, it was hard for me to believe at first as well. I was there to buy backing for a quilt I'm working on (still day of the dead - not very Christmasy) and I stumbled into this madhouse. The store was overrun with women in holiday sweaters all snatching up Christmas village houses and then arguing with the cashier about their price. The most common purchase it seemed, was Christmas-print fabric, which I found very strange. Every person in the store had at least a bolt or two of the stuff in their cart, two weeks before Christmas! I thought these ladies were laboring under a serious misconception if they believed that the projects they envisioned sitting in their homes or under their Christmas tree would be ready by the time the big day rolled around (see for example my day of the dead quilt - over a month past due). It is not as if we all don't have enough on our plates already. Then I realized that we were all in the same boat, really; the woman in front of me at the cutting table wanted to make matching pajamas for her sons to wear on Christmas eve, the woman I spoke to in line was making a blanket for her first grandchild, and I overheard on couple debating which cross-stitched stocking they each wanted. While I didn't choose to work my holiday obsession out in fabric, I know where they are coming from. I always seem to want more intimacy in my holiday, I want less advertisement and more Norman Rockwell. When that becomes a problem is when you become so single-minded that the only way your holiday can be homey and be picture-perfect is if you do it all and do it all yourselves. I just hope these people realize that while Bobby and Johnny may remember their "gifts made with love" fondly, they will also carry the image of their mother sobbing hysterically over a sewing machine at 11 o'clock at night. I say, the ideal isn't for everyone and sometimes store-bought can taste just as good and often contains more sanity. Then again, I could just be trying to make myself feel better.