I was about to look for a thread like this after being accused of being a “Bah humbug” as we hung the holiday decorations in the deli. See, I like Christmas. I like the giving part of it. I just hate every other thing that gets dragged around with it.
What you’ve posted is a work of art that truly speaks to my soul. You are my new hero. 
This thread could be called reasons I love Eve.
Bless your Grinchy heart 
A long time ago hubby and I came to an agreement about Christmas. You see, he came from a family that had THEIR customs while I came from a famly that had OUR customs. And trying to honor both sets left us tired and stressed and actually angry at each other. As in, “Oh, sure, drag me out to Midnight Mass – YOU aren’t the one who has to be up at six am to get started cooking.” Or, “Yes, I’d love to climb up and down a zillion slippery ladder rungs to outline every edge of every door, window and gutter on the house with fucking ugly multicolored lights.”
So we sat down and talked things over, and decided we would pare down the customs to the ones we really, really cared about. We would take turns announcing a custom which we would no longer keep. And to keep things fair (read, avoid the breakout of warfare) you could only discard one of your own customs.
And, of course, once one of us couldn’t come up with a custom they would let go of, that would end it, and we’d do all the ones that were left.
It was an interesting exchange. At first we were sort of tentative, coming up with minor things. Like, the first two on the chopping block were Baking our own stollen for Christmas morning and having our own Christmas cards made with a photo of all the household residents, yes, including pets.
Then we had some ‘mercy to the other side’ offerings: Let’s skip the damned outdoor lights and you don’t have to make ‘topiaries’ out of red and green gumdrops stuck into foam shapes with toothpicks. (I mean, really???)
And then it was bigger things, because somehow, when we started thinking about them, we really and truly don’t care that much. As in, Why the hell do you you have to wrap presents, anyway? Just keep them hidden (with the other side on their honor not to snoop) until the big day. And screw the vast bulk of Christmas cards. My list went from well over 100 names to six housebound, elderly relatives that year. 
We enjoyed the ‘freedom’ from those customs so much, we did a lot more trimming the next year. In fact, we have found that there was really only one old ‘family custom’ that each of really cared about, and so that is all we do.
For me it was Christmas cookies. I love baking Christmas cookies. I baked 42 dozen last year. No, we don’t eat that many. I use them for presents to people I want to give presents to AND I use them for all the ‘mandatory’ gift exchanges we seem to run into. His office, my office, ‘secret santa’ exhanges in three different clubs, etc, etc. I don’t care whose name I’ve drawn, I don’t care what the price limit is, I don’t go shopping, period. I just grab a good looking container (I collect baskets and bowls and jars and such all year at garage sales) and stuff it with an assortment of cookies and tie on a bow. Done! Haven’t had a complaint yet, btw. I mean, even if you don’t like cookies, or are a diabetic, you can always turn around and palm them off on someone else or feed them to guests, right?
My hubby’s custom has turned out to be a lot of fun, now that it’s not just ONE MORE DAMNED THING TO DO ON TOP OF A MILLION OTHERS. On Christmas eve we go out driving around and ‘rate’ people’s yard decorations. We have a bunch of printed out ‘certificates’ which we fill in and leave in people’s mailboxes when something about a yard catches our eyes. Silly awards like “Best use of non-traditional props” to the house with a manger scene whose background was a stack of those stupid Halloween ‘pumpkin’ leave bags. Straightforward like “Best decorated front yard lantern”. “Honorable mentions” like, Well, at least you tried.
There’s something so juvenile about this that it delights us. Maybe it’s that whole trying to sneak up to someone’s door and leave a note without being caught thing.
Wow, I’m rambing. Pretty much all I’m saying is, you don’t have to go from feeling harried because you try to do EVERYTHING all the way to doing NOTHING. I bet if you sat down and thought about it, there’d be one or two things about the holiday ruckus that you genuinely like, either now, or maybe from your childhood. Find out what those are, do them, and let all the rest of the hullabaloo flow past you while you float above it undisturbed, like a lily pad on a stream.
Now, gotta make my shopping list. Fifty pound each, white flour and granulated sugar, 25 pounds light brown sugar,…
I wish it was snowing here. It’s as hot as Hades and no fun at all doing battle in the mall or the carpark.
And what moron decided we, in the southern hemisphere, should emulate our cooler cousins by eating hot turkey, ham, plum pudding etc etc?
My dad keeps saying every year that he wants to buy a stupid singing raindeer head to put on the front door, which activates whenever somebody trips it’s motion sensor.
I told him that I’d probably tolerate for a day or two and then Mr. Singing moose will be having a singing contest with Mr. 12 gauge.
Oo! No you should rig it up like one of those scary funhouse monsters. So it’ll snarl and lurch forward with a zombie-sounding “Urrrrraaagh!”
Scare the crap out of visitors!
At my house we have one word for all that: Mom.
StarvingButStrong’s got it right. Do what you really want to do and cram the rest. The very worst Christmas we ever had was the one I decided would be perfect. By noontime we were tired, cranky, and irritable. Small children were crying and alleged adults were fighting over trivia. Never again.
We put up a few lights because we like them. I decorate a tree because I enjoy it. I like giving gifts to my children, even though they’re grown up now. But I hate shopping and am oh, so grateful for on-line stores and Amazon wish lists. I have found a couple of brick&mortar stores that I like, including one jewelry store whose prices are a bit high but who have excellent customer service.
I try to find the Alistair Sim *Christmas Carol * on t.v. at some point.
This month is actually an upper for me as compared to, say October, when it is also getting darker, and which has no holidays except for Halloween, which is the stupidest holiday ever. At least now, it’s only 3 weeks to the solstice, when things will start to improve, lightwise.
As far as the “religious” part, I find it amusing. Most of the stuff, except for manger scenes, has nothing whatsoever to do with any religion other than paganism, the real Old Time Religion. Which is fine with me; I consider the red & green, the holly, the evergreens, and all that to be a nice assurance of the faith that the light will return.
Sorry to sidetrack from all the doom, gloom & angst.
As you were.
You say this as if it were a bad thing.
I say, let dad get the singing whatsit, then follow through with your plan. I only ask that, before you perform the deed, get a digital camcorder (or borrow one) and record the dastardly deed. Then post it on the internet. I know I would watch it!!
Hear, hear! I’d watch it.
Jack, hope you don’t mind but the above (as edited) is now in 24pt type on a sheet of paper in my cube. Duly credited of course. Thanks for bringing that image into my life.
Miss Manners tells us to prune the ungrateful and annoying from our Christmases, and she didn’t have a blanket exception for moms.
Huh. That’s why I WON’T be shopping at Target this year.
My brother died of AIDS on Dec. 20, 1990. He was blind, incoherent, weighed about 80 pounds, and was covered in sores. One would think that would be enough to sour me on the season, but it doesn’t. Instead, I remember him as he was on all the preceding Christmases and smile. Any other complaint I could possibly have about hte season pales in comparison, so I pay them absolutely no attention at all.
Thanks for this thread Eve. I could say: Come to the Netherlands, but it’s the same shit here.
Worse.
We used to have Sinterklaas, A Dutch Tradition. [Invented To Get Lots Of Presents And Annoy Your Family And Friends] which is celebrated on December 5th. Now the old basterd with the pope’s hat is replaced - somewhere halfway November - with your Santa Claus.
At least you could insult your great-aunt with rhymes and surprises at ‘Sinterklaas’
And sometimes have a good laugh when another drunk Sinterklaas came visiting the kiddies.
Now we nearly ignore old Sint and his Pete with the rod. :eek: and we have those same ‘illuminated’ houses, panic in the mall and awful songs.
Which makes me wonder… Would playing The Pogues’ Christmas song be a nice change? :
You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God it’s our last
hehehehe
Merry Christmas, {{{{{{Eve}}}}}}}}
Yeah,
And what if also your birthday is on Christmas day but YOU’RE NOT ALL BITTER ABOUT getting one fawkin’ present for “both your birthday and Christmas, dear” for your whole life, and because of everything going on around the holidays that your mother actually forgot your birthday a couple of years?
Huh? Huh?
But you know, I’m not bitter.
But I am in love with Eve
pepperlandgirl hit the nail on the head. And thank you, Eve, for starting this thread. The only person who understands my loathing for Christmas is my husband, which is one of the many reasons I love him so much. The shitty TV, the music, the endless buying, stress, eating, guilt associated with the eating and the buying…Agh! There are so many reasons I hate this season I couldn’t possibly name all of them. I used to LOVE Christmas as a kid, but good god, not any more. I can’t even go to the fucking grocery without getting the holiday season rammed down my throat.
gum: Now we nearly ignore old Sint and his Pete with the rod.
Sez who?! I been seeing nothing but Sints and Piets here in my first Dutch winter! I looked out the window last weekend and there was a freaking party barge coming down the gracht with Sint and the Pieters and an entire rubberducking brass band playing music! I saw a troop of schoolkids yesterday afternoon blacked up as Piets and singing carols down the street!
Blows me away, because I’ve never seen these particular Christmas emblems before, and it’s a neverfailing shock to see people made up in blackface (which is a big no-no in the US, for good reason). Sure, I recognize some aspects of the standard American commercial Christmas here, but no way is it as extreme as it is in the USA. I was just reading this thread congratulating myself on how lucky I am to be here experiencing a more moderate Christmas season, instead of the usual all-out kitscherei and desperate commercialism and endlessly repeated Christmas music in the malls.
Gotta say, though, I like all the illuminated decorations. The days are so much shorter here at higher latitudes (doesn’t get light till after 8:30 and it’s dark by 4:30, for pity’s sake, I know it’s winter but this is ridiculous!), and the heating is so much, well, less extravagant, I really need all the pretty lights around to give me a feeling of sparkle and warmth. I guess that’s the point of having any kind of “festival of lights” around the winter solstice, anyway.
Dear Santa… I want to go to MAL! There’s gonna be bears there!
I feel your pain. I was born the day after Christmas and everyone is too freakin’ busy to celebrate. You can never have parties with your friends actually on your birthday, because at least half of them are off some where celebrating Christmas with their families. It used to drive me batty when I was a kid. My parents said that if I had been born on Christmas day they were going to name me “Mary Christine” I am sooooo glad I wasn’t.
I do love Christmas though. I love the way everything smells. I don’t pay much attention to the malls, so I would probably have a different impression if I lived in a busy shopping area. But the songs really need to go. Last week I was in Del Taco and they were pipping Christmas music over the speakers. Wtf?!!?