My list of things that I want out of my Christmas experience. Add yours.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Rudolph, you red-nosed abomination created by a department store for ads, I want you out of my Chritmas experience. You’re a fake, a fraud - a scam perpetrated on the American public. Santa’s got an 8-reindeer team, not nine. At the North Pole, there are eight reindeer to care for and feed, pal, so back off. Santa ain’t the suing type, but you’re all over his share of the fame, little buddy. I’ll take a Comet or a Cupid with two bad legs and broken antlers over your whiny little red-nosed ass anyday, you twit.

And you, Mr. $500,000 dollar house owner with the discounted faded plastic snowman and the cheesey plastic giant candles flanking your garage, I want you and you’re lame-ass decorations to go away.

Needed: less shopping and more carol-ing.

2

The little drummer boy. He can ba-rump-ba-bump-bump his heinie right out of here.

3

The crass comercialization that has become Christmas in the U.S.

Any and all garish lighting displays on houses. If you have to ask if your lights are garish, the answer is yes. If you have colored bulbs it falls under this heading. If your lights twinkle, pulsate, flash, or glow they fall under this heading. If your lights are on the exterior of your home, they fall under this heading. If your lights are visible to anyone on the outside of your home, they fall under this heading. If I will ever, even remotely, come into a vicinity of an area in which I might possibly have an opportunity to maybe see these lights, they fall under this heading.

All plastic, metal, wood, or composite images of anything you can imagine: Snowmen, toy soldiers, Santa, candy canes, anything else you can buy, beg, borrow, steal, or make. Get rid of them. Burn 'em, bury 'em, bash 'em, or trash 'em. I don’t care, just make sure they’re dead and gone.

The idiotic rush the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping. That includes one-day-only sales, early-bird specials, and any other enticement to get people to flock to stores all at the same time. Are you kidding me? Is it really that important to do $1.5B in one day rather than over the season?

The God-awful constant rotation of Christmas music on radio stations since October. I solemnly vow that if any station I listen to starts this sort of crap before December 20, I will never tune in that station again. Ever!

Well, that’s enough for now. BTW Bah Humbug!

4

Ooh, add this to the list of crap we can do without: those color wheels with three colors that rotate and illuminate “Seasons Greetings” onto the sides of houses.

5

Gee, I always got a kick out of seeing the pathological displays of lighting, etc. that are so popular in the neighborhood next to mine. My friends and I used to go driving around looking for the most egregious examples just for laughs. I would love to see what the electricity bill comes to for these people!

A rather personal peeve, but I’ll add it anyway:

Dear Sis: If you think there’s a gift that the boys (my nephews) would especially like, tell me. Or give me their wish list to Santa. Stop buying things you want them to have and then say, when I ask for ideas, that you have already bought everything and I need only give you the money. Kinda sucks the fun out of giving the kids something, ya know?

[sub] [hijack] Hey Philster, how’s things going with business in India? [/hijack] [/sub]

6

I’m still twitching from seeing the attrocity that one of my apartment-mates put up in the living room. He calls it a Christmas Tree. I don’t understand this, as there doesn’t seem to be anything Christmas about it, and I don’t think it’s a tree. Let me elaborate.

It’s plastic, kind of a bland off-green. It’s rather conical in shape, but it’s lop-sided and tilts to the right about half-way up. On top sits something, vaguely female-human in shape with a royal blue gown on her. Wrapped around this green blob of plastic are shiny ropes of blue (a vastly different blue than the top-thing) and silver tinsel. Gold, red, silver, and blue (a third blue) balls hang from some of the out-reaching fingers of the green plastic blob. Multi-colored twinkling lights run parallel to the gaudy shiny tinsel. Other outcroppings of the blob hold aloft such wonderful items as a sock adorned with a group portrait of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a cat, and a merry-go-round (?) that plays annoying Christmas songs in a high pitched electronic squeal.

Anyone wonder why my head throbs and ears bleed whenever I walk through the common area?

7

Ever hear of Buy Nothing Day? Join in next year.

8

Oh, and by the way - could we please find a way to eradicate all-white fake Christmas trees from existence? They really, really doesn’t look anything like snow-covered trees. Honest. No, really. And if I see one in the office this year, I might just be tempted to use a nutcracker in ways the designer never intended. Thanks.

9

clayton_e, I have never and will never shop at any sort of store or retail establishment on Black Friday. Nor will I frequent such establishments (if at all possible on that entire weekend. It’s a matter of principle.

I did, however, have to work in a Wal-Mart on Black Friday one year. Luckily I was in the meat department, and the only one on so I couldn’t be dragged up to the registers. I was supposed to work BF one year when I was a cashier, but I had Fridays listed as no availability. They scheduled me for a shift anyway! When a manager came to ask me if I could work a 12-hour shift that day I told them no, as I am unavailable on Fridays (I had changed availability a month before in anticipation). The look on her face when she realized that meant I wasn’t coming in was priceless.

10

Turkey.

I already have to eat this foul bird a month before and now you make me eat it again on Christmas Day?!?!?!

Of course, the Christmas Eve feast of crab legs and shrimp scampi… mmmm…

11

People bitching about how commercial it has become (as if it were a recent development, too). Why wouldn’t it be commercial? People with money celebrate with money. I call it the “money effect”. Others call it capitalism.

12

My goodness, it seems some people have their little Grinch-shoes a bit too tight.

All I really want to do without this holiday season is the endless moaning and bitching about how commercialized the season is, and how people don’t like this, that, or the other. Be a grump if you want, but shut up and let the rest of us enjoy ourselves, eh? Consider it an act of holiday charity.

Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find my antler headband and blinking nose. I’m going shopping tomorrow.

13

My brother. He decided to leave Aus last week. Damn him! theres Christmas all fucked up!. It better be a damn fine sunny day, the only compensation for IT being there.

14

I guess I could do without the annual, “They’ve got their Christmas stuff up? It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”

In my 36 years on this earth, I’ve never seen a year when Christmas stuff wasn’t up before Thanksgiving. How can people be surprsied by this every year?

15

I love my neighbors’ gaudy, glitzy Christmas lights. I wouldn’t put them up myself, but by God, they’re festive.

What I don’t like is that every single damn ad has to do with Christmas. Switch to a new telephone plan, cause it’s Christmas! Eat crap at McDonald’s cause it’s Christmas!It’s not like I enjoy advertisments anyway but it does grate a bit.

I want more carollers, too, Philster.

16

I want a complete lack of familial conflict. And an iPod.

Oh, and I don’t want to go to fucking church.

17

Gift certificates. If you can’t be bothered to shop specifically for me, then don’t get me anything. It’s all right. Really. Or you could just send me happy thoughts … or prayers. I’d rather you not just throw money at me. Thanks.

My brother. Deacon Bah Humshit himself. Can’t leave his house on Christmas or Christmas Eve… He was so “tormented” as a child, having to leave his great big pile of toys at home and being forced to visit adoring grandparents, who were to poor to buy gifts. Gee, I was there, deacon dear. It wasn’t torment. It was great, being surrounded by all that love. It was teaching us that FAMILY is what Christmas is about, not accumulating more crap. Geez, I feel sorry for your kids. Never seeing family at Christmas, unless we go to you… and you don’t invite us. :dubious:

My mother-in-law. Sweetie, I love you but isn’t there anything I can to do make you happy. Other than divorcing your son :rolleyes: (ain’t.gonna.happen.) You hate every present I’ve ever given you - so I tried making you home-made jams and jellies, because you like them. Well you did until I made them. <sigh>

Neighborhoods that only allow people to decorate with white. Boring! And I just love seeing mounds of lights on other people’s houses. Whole neighborhoods that look like Christmas has done thrown up all over the place. :smiley: And I’m very glad that none of these people live near me.

18

Two major Christmas pet peeves:

  1. Locally produced commercials where the store/business owner dresses like Santa. Car dealers especially get my goat on this.

  2. Bad variations on “A Night Before Christmas”. It’s called meter, people. You get it by counting syllables and choosing words carefully. Try to remember your 9th-grade English class and get the poetic meter right!

19

I’m not going to grip about the commercialism of Christmas, but I could certainly do without the ‘obligation gift’. You all know what I mean. I resent feeling like I have to get gifts for family members that I’m not close to and never particularly liked to begin with. Besides, I remember getting obligation gifts for a few years from one uncle and his ilk, and I rather they would have just forgotten to get me anything.

20

:dubious: