Merry Christ-Maas from The Talent Trade!

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Hi, welcome to The Talent Trade.

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This is Stephanie Maas.

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I want to start with a disclaimer this day and age, and I think that it's for a lot of good reasons.

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I often feel like this time of the year, it's super difficult to know what to say and.

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I'm the kind of person where I don't want to ever offend anyone at the same time.

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I'm kind of cuckoo for Christmas.

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So as we jump into our brief session today, I would like to ask that if you're going to continue to listen, anytime that I mentioned Christmas.

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Or Merry Christmas or anything that's specific to my beliefs.

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Please translate that into whatever works for you and don't get caught up in the actual words that are used, but rather this sentiment of me wishing you and all the ones that you love and care about a wonderful time of the year.

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If you can do that, let's move forward in love and peace and all the things that are good.

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If not, please hit pause and move on to something else.

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So I am cuckoo for Christmas, truly the day after Halloween.

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I am one of those people.

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I don't actually put my Christmas decorations up unless they're requested by my kids.

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But the truth is I am listening to Christmas music.

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I am Christmas shopping mostly online, but nonetheless, the spirit just catches me even in the most challenging, darkest times of my life.

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There is just something about Christmas that gets me there.

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I will thank my parents for this.

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I think it really comes from them.

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I didn't always grow up with a lot of money.

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We are of that generation where, you know, my parents literally saved all year long to make Christmas special.

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Both of my parents came from very large families, and we were just about the only ones that lived far away.

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So Christmas for me was, it was about being spoiled because my parents had saved all year.

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It was about.

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Seeing family that maybe we hadn't even seen since the last Christmas, it was about eating food that we normally didn't get to eat.

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It was just everything about it was so incredibly special.

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So, as the season comes upon us again, I'm a total dork.

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I can't help it.

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I just get in this Olly jolly mood.

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I learned it very long time ago.

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Just start early, get everything done by December one.

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So I can relax and truly enjoy the holidays.

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I should also put out as a disclaimer, I'm not a big gift person.

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The gifts that I tend to like are very unrealistic, like, Hey, I love a new car.

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Never going to have it.

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And then at the same time, some of my favorite gifts have been really little things.

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But the point is for me, it's not always about the gifts of the season.

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So I don't have to shop for tons and tons and tons of folks.

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So that does take a lot of pressure off.

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But I do love.

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Thinking about others and trying to do things for others to make them feel special during this time.

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I know that there are folks that probably have way more stressful holidays than I do.

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And I just want to acknowledge that being stress free is not easy.

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But anyway, the day after Halloween, the Holly Jolly takes over.

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We have some other super fun memories for our family.

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I have a large family when we are together.

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There's a total of 22 of us for my, just my immediate family, my siblings, my folks, their spouses and kids.

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22 is a lot.

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That's also something I personally love about the holiday season.

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I don't mind the noise.

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I love walking into a house and seeing people that I love and care about so much, smiling, laughing, being silly, seeing the kids run over all over the house, just the stuff everywhere, the smells of what's going on.

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And as soon as the day after Halloween hits, it's like all of that comes my way with such enthusiasm.

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It's, it can be barely contained, quite frankly.

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So I'm one of those people that if I do go out and go shopping, I try to just stick with happy holidays because again, I don't want to offend anybody, but I've got a grin on my face the whole time.

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I'm trying to figure out how I can be super nice to folks.

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I am thankful that we do try to give as much as possible to others who aren't in the same situation that we're in.

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That makes me feel super good.

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You feel amazing when you give to somebody else.

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It just feels amazing.

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So I try to do that a lot.

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We absolutely have the traditions of I put up a lot of trees.

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I just have tried really hard.

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To set the example of, Hey, this is a joyous time.

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And if it's stressing you out, we're probably not doing it the right way.

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I also don't really care what my presents look like.

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I wrap them of course, um, and I try and make them look neat, but I'm not a creative type.

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So that's not an outlet for me.

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It's a functional thing.

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So wrapping gifts doesn't stress me out because I don't have to do that great of a job, at least not by my standards.

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So we go into this mode and I just love it.

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The other thing, and you've probably picked up on this already, this time of the year is ridiculously sentimental for me.

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I am so thankful that I still have both of my parents.

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I'm very close with my siblings and their families.

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Every day just feels like I am knee deep in nostalgia and I love it.

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Christmas was such an incredibly positive time for me growing up.

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I, of course, think about, you know, once I started having my own family, part of our Christmas decorations are putting up pictures of our family throughout the years at Christmastime because Christmas is a big deal for our family and just seeing pictures of my now almost I have two kids that are almost grown and I got one that's kind of getting there, but Seeing pictures of them from Christmases and years past and, you know, remembering fun, silly things that we used to do when the kids were little and things that we're doing now that they've gotten older and enjoying that and so forth and so on.

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The music, oh my gosh, I love Christmas music.

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Just so sentimental.

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So this is the time of year where my thankfulness goes into overdrive.

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So as you are spending time, God willing, with the ones that you love, I want to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever fits you best.

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And I just want to say thank you.

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I appreciate you ever listening, even if it's for 30 seconds to the talent trade, I want to say thank you.

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I appreciate the listening, any and all feedback, as long as it's constructive, you can keep any mean comments to yourself and hope you and the ones you love have an incredibly wonderful holiday.

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Merry Christmas.