• It’s cold and dark and windy and it’s going to start getting snowy and icy soon.
• Religion—which has been nipping at my heels all year—suddenly leaps up, grabs me by the collar, and yells, “Gotcha ya!”
• Enforced jollity. I am not jolly. I am in a slough of despond, a pit of despair, and I will thank you to keep your goddam tinsel out of it.
• TV gets all heartwarming. If I want my heart to be warm, I will rip it out of my ribcage and thrust it, still beating, into a microwave.
• Office parties. While I don’t actually dislike these people, do I really have to spend after-work hours socializing with them?
• Trying to bulldoze my way down the sidewalks in midtown Manhattan through crowds of shoppers and gawkers and Santas and those goddam Falun Gong people (at this point, I am ready to “suppress them” myself).
• Lawn decorations. Huge, tacky, ho-ho-ho-ing, lawn decorations, which will stay up till fucking May.
Of course, there is nothing to encourage sloughs of despond like the endless reiteration of bad Xmas music everywhere you go.* Not to mention pseudo-Xmas music like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”. And having a fellow shopper singing along.
Woof-woof!
*The highlight of this phenomenon one recent season was performing an autopsy to the accompaniment of Xmas music piped into the hospital morgue. There is nothing quite like doing a bowel run to the tune of Burl Ives’ “Have A Holly Jolly Christmas”.
• It’s cold and dark and windy and it’s going to start getting snowy and icy soon–but that also means that you are closer to the winter equinox, so that after 12/22, the days will start getting longer on the countdown to spring.
• Religion—Can be ignored.
• Enforced jollity–Can help relieve the despair.
• TV gets all heartwarming–Watch Bad Santa as an antidote.
• Office parties–Two words. Free. Booze.
• Trying to bulldoze my way down the sidewalks in midtown Manhattan–hitting people and scrimmaging through the crowds can be a terrific catharthis for pent-up hostility.
• Lawn decorations–Can give you a delightful sense of superiority that you have better taste than those rubes.
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I’m sorry the season is getting you down, and I wish things were going better for you.
But think about the Maccabees. Despite the gloom and despair of fighting a mad emperor who was killing their people for practicing their faith, they banded together and kicked Seleucid ass for the Lord. Then they relit the Temple light which stayed lit for 8 miraculous days until they could prepare new oil for the lamp and invent the potato pancake. Apparently, wooden tops were also involved.
Sure, it’s myth, but it makes an important point; even when life is bleak and seemingly hopeless, if you can keep your inner light alive you’ll find the means to sustain it.
I don’t like the Chinese government for much, but I’m starting to have sympathy for them on these guys. I swear if I see one more picture of a torture machine I think I’m gonna ask one of those very vaguely creepy guys where I can get one.
I gotta side with Eve on this one. I could handle the hoopla if it weren’t everywhere for the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and if some people didn’t feel compelled to start the brouhaha as early as Halloween. But after having Christmas thrust in my face day after day after day, I don’t feel any holiday spirit at all. In fact, the whole frenzy of it has caused me to opt out of Christmas entirely. I will stay home by myself, not because I have no other options, but because I’m fed up with the whole thing. I’ll make myself a nice meal and relax, and enjoy it like any other day off.
Ug! The first of the neighborhood displays went up a few days before thanksgiving and it’s a huge power-sucking monstrosity. Its very vastness seems to have lit the fire of competition under the rest of my neighbors. Someone on these boards once referred to excessive Christmas displays as Elf Barf, a phrase I’ve co-opted as my own.
One of these Christmases I swear. Every year I get a little bit weirder about Christmas. This year I started to think about Christmas around November 5, but my idea of Christmas mostly involves Nina Simone, brown liquor and crying while bathed in weird-coloured twinkly lights. I’m so sad. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s better to be sad at Christmas time than it is to be sad in summer. So I’m not sure if this post is anti Christmas or pro.
I had to do some shopping this past weekend. Our office dresscode is changing from “corporate casual” to “corporate not-so-casual.” Oh dear, Og… It depressed me so much.
I’m not kidding. Being in a mall weirds me out. Being in a mall full of frantic panicking Christamas shoppers made me, quite literally, feel ill. I had to go outside because I started dry heaving from seeing that much stress juxtaposed with phony affected “cheer”. (No word of a lie, I nearly threw up).
And the music!! ARRRRGH! The Boy Band Flavor-of-the-Month Idol Christmas carols – Gah! Can they not just sing a note? Just one note. One! Without sliding all over the musical scale: “Siiiiilent Ni-eye-eye-iiiiiiAAAAAAAiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-eye-eye-ight…”
Mom_Crayons and I have been happily boycotting Christmas for the past few years. Oh, it’s so aaaaawesome! No pressure no rushing, no buying shit for family members you hate who won’t like anything you get them anyway… We loafed and were slothful and thoroughly stress free.
If you can ignore religion in the USA, you must also be able to ignore oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.
I also hate how every little thing has to be repackaged in cheesy christmas kitsch. Reindeer horns on your jack-in-the-box guy. Normal candy now must be red and green. That awful fake snow that looks like the leftover fake cobweb stuff from halloween. The Jesus thing shoved down your throat. The horrible music. The horrible, horrible music. Those people on the corners with bells that ring and ring and WILL NOT STOP unless you put money in the pot, and then it is only for a second.
The one thing that CAN cheer me up is the snowboarding, though.
How about the sudden realization that Family Is So Important And We Must Spend Time With The Very People That Drive Us Utterly BatShit The Rest Of The Year not to forget, **We Have To Have Christmas Celebration EXACTLY THE SAME WAY FOREVER BECAUSE IF IT IS CHANGED ONE IOTA EVERYONE WILL COLLECTIVELY SUFFER APOPLEXY. **
Oh, and the main reason I hate the season so much? It really, really brings out the worst in people. “Shoppig cart” rage. People spending money they don’t have because they feel obligated to. Rushing arund fully hating every moment of shopping. And really, really stressed out people who haven’t yet recovered from all the family melodrama of Thanksgiving.
How many pit thread were there like “my moron brother/cousin/uncle/father-in-law just ruined Thanksgiving”? And now come all the “what the hell kind of Christmas present am I supposed to get for that moron brother/cousin/uncle/father-in-law of mine???” threads.
I can not stand this season because all I see aorund me are ugly, angry, sour-looking faces. People impatiently pushing through each other, more road rage than usual and a “would you get the hell outta my way” attitude all around.
It’s like seeing your parents fighting when you’re really little – I see my entire community turn into garland-wielding barbarians.
Criminy, when I’m pissy I get scolded, and whn I try to be inspirational I get scolded.
sigh
Still, I believe that in a cold and indifferent universe we have to hold on to the things that give us hope. Yeah, winter sucks and it’s gray and gloomy, and I know Eve’s bumming over other matters. But those are the times when a hug and affection do the most good. I’m not about to break out into my impression of Andrea McArdle singing “Tomorrow,” but I do believe that you have to hold on to belief that things will get better.
Generally, I love the holiday season. The crappy TV and overplayed music I can do without, of course.
But, there is one thing I have grown to HATE in the past few years. I moved into a neighborhood that becomes a magical place called Candy Cane Lane. Several blocks of this neighborhood get together and decorate the bejezus out of their homes, which is one hell of a spectacle. This, of course, brings people out from everywhere in the San Fernando Valley to look at the lights, the dancing elves, and the giant Bob’s Big Boy Santa.
This means that from sunset to around 10 PM, the streets are nearly blocked with station wagons, minivans, and SUVs, making it near impossible to get out of our driveway in a timely fashion, and even worse, dragging what would normally be a two minute drive out of (or back in) the neighborhood into thirty minutes or more. We have to debate on whether or not when we leave in the evenings if it’s important, and if we do, if it’s fine to wait it out and come home late. No quick runs to the store for the month of December, that’s for sure.
From the day after Thanksgiving until the day after Christmas (and quite possibly New Year’s), I do not shop, except for food. Normally I enjoy shopping, but I cannot stand the crowds and general insanity. I MIGHT shop at Target this year, seeing as how they have enforced their ban on soliciting outside the stores to include EVERYONE.
Oooooh, excellent point JavaMaven about the Crappy TV.
Those Very Special Christmas Specials featuring B list actors with a plot so nauseatingly sweet, simple and devoid of a plot that it induces the watcher into a coma before the first commerical break.
Yes, we can watch a TV show with the whole family at Christmas. It’s called **Fear Factor ** where they have contestants shove the christmas tree up their anus (ornaments, tinsel and lights included.) and the women get to ride the yule log.