What Christmas means for working mothers

I'm finally getting into the Christmas spirit. The tree is up. My little girl has broken up from nursery (sounds terrifyingly grown up!). The stress is starting and the bank account is fucked to put it bluntly. And I've yet to sort a pub for our 'stress and cooking free' Christmas dinner. Once again it's money and pressure that has prompted me to post this. Although I'm excited about time off and my family being together, I'm terrified at the prospect of not earning for a few days - it always seems to leave a huge dent in the monthly pay cheque. I yearn for the days when you took 5 days paid holiday and got 2 weeks out of the office - care and stress free. One of my companies is being very generous in doing a special festive Christmas payment run so that we get paid before the 25th. I'm hugely grateful to them for it. It's a shame the other firms I work for didn't want to jump on the joyous bandwagon, but I can understand why. I feel the pressure to earn and keep earning is constantly on my back. If I don't, I always fall short the next month - I get stung for bank charges and find myself in the same situation only worse and more peeved the next month. January is a notoriously long and hard and desperate month... I'm just hoping that I've done, and I'm doing enough to ensure that we'll get through Christmas and have a decent cheque in 2009. Sorry to sound so negative but it's reality... I can see why some people dread Christmas. It is in some ways such a happy and giving time; and in others a worry and a necessary evil. I should look at the true meaning of Christmas and be thankful, and I am, I really am. But in modern times it's hard to see it as something other than a money guzzling nightmare.