The Holiday Season
Shikamaru hated the holiday season.
Halloween was the beginning of the troublesome season. The costumes were a source of amusement and the parties were fun but from there it was just a down ward spiral. The reasoning behind this was that even before Halloween was over, Christmas decorations were up.
If there was one thing to be hated, it was those Christmas decorations.
They were all over the place. Sale posters were plastered everywhere, there were bright and colorful adds in the newspaper, the music was everywhere. Just flashes of red green red green red green red green. It made him want to scream and beg someone to change the colors to something else entirely like purple and blue. Anything but the overabundance and overuse of red and green.
And then there's the Christmas music. The biggest culprit of all. The songs were nice and they were fun to sing and go around and go caroling but they came on too soon. Anything before Thanksgiving was too soon.
Thanksgiving is about being thankful for what one has such as friends and family. The day is perfectly reasonable and is a widely celebrated holiday. So why did so many people cover it's arrival with another holiday?
Another thing that was troublesome about the holiday season was that it cost money. A lot of money. First, money is spent on the Halloween costume, candy, and small decorations. Then, money is spent on food for Thanksgiving which is quite a bit of money considering that food is not cheap. Then Christmas cost more than Halloween and Thanksgiving combined.
Not only did he have to buy presents for his family but he also had to buy presents for his friends and more importantly, his girlfriend. Spending the money wasn't even the troublesome part. The real difficulty was figuring out what to buy. If he chose nothing, might be viewed as something of little worth and might insult the other person. Then again he didn't want to completely empty his bank account either.
The season didn't even stop at Christmas, oh no, it ended after New Years. Where there were more parties and more spending money. However, this one he felt had a more sentimental value. People made vows that would improve their lives and enjoyed the start of a new fresh year together. That and the fact that his whole apartment would be clean and he wouldn't have to worry about cleaning it for the next couple of months and it's something that they all had to do so he wasn't alone.
The first time he told Temari he thought for sure that she was going to hit him and yell at him angrily. Instead she sat quietly for a moment and then titled her head to the side, in thought. She then turned her head towards him and the big, wide grin that he loved appeared across her face and she told him that she would expect nothing different from him.
So the following Halloween he spent the money on the costume and he went to the parties. He spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with his family and the rest of his teammates families and refused to listen to Christmas music before the day of ThanksHe flat out refused to buy anything when Christmas came around except for his parents. For his friends, he gave them his time when shopping for presents, and to his beautiful girlfriend, he gave his heart and a rather romantic evening with out a physical gift.
To his surprise, everyone accepted the fact that he was being a semi Scrooge and didn't give him anything during the Christmas season, except for his parents who gave him new furniture for his apartment. Even Temari, who he thought would be insulted by the fact that he got her nothing seemed to accept this and be fine.
New Years came by which was traditionally spent with the rest of his clan. Now that Temari was becoming a more serious girlfriend, he took her with him s the clan could meet her. The evening was relatively pleasant but would have rather spent the evening with his friends and cleaning like he needed to. There was nothing he could do however and so New Years came and went.
On New Years day he returned with Temari to his apartment feeling satisfied. He had survived all of the money spending, torturous decorations, the over played music. He had survived not giving a single gift and survived New Years with his family. So when he walked into his apartment, he was floored as his friends popped up and yelled surprise.
He looked at them in shock and saw that his apartment was completely cleaned with the new furniture in place. He then turned to his girlfriend and saw that she knew about this plan. Thy brought him into the kitchen where there was food cooked up for all of them to eat and that's when he found out that this was his Holiday gift.
For Ino, he had spent the whole day helping her find the perfect cocktail dress for the Christmas party she was going to. For Choji he helped pick out the perfect pair of earrings for his mother. For Tenten, he comforted her at a small café when she thought that her relationship with Neji might be over. For each of the friends that were standing in his house, he had done something for them and no matter how small it was, they were grateful.
Their gift in return was Temari's idea and of course she knew the exact thing he needed. If every Holiday season was like this one, then it's not as bad as he thought and worth every cent.