It's Official: I'm Over Christmas.

[bjarvis]

I can't recall any time I've actually been a big fan of Christmas. I'm sure before I was about 10 years of age, I looked forward to opening presents on the morning of December 25 but since most of those years were best forgotten anyway, I have no mental record of such an event. I recall being very blase about the holiday from age 12 onwards, indifferent but tolerant. From about 20 onwards, my tolerance seemed to decrease every year as my annoyance at the whole enterprise gradually increased. I'm about to hit 40 and I can now safely declare that, as of today, December 19, 2006, I have had enough of Christmas.

As much as folks like to talk about the religious aspects of the holiday season, I have seen no evidence of it whatsoever. It is purely and 100% commercial. Any religious content is an accidental leftover, a scrap of a distant past which Hallmark hasn't swept away just yet. The official symbol of Christmas is not a wreath or a tree, it's a dollar sign.

Jesus, if you're still considering a second coming, don't bother: there's nothing here for you to work with, and you couldn't afford it anyway.

I'm OK with Christmas being little more than an excuse for commercial profit, but the sudden surge is impinging on our ability to do regular day-to-day domestic commerce. I tried to get lunch today, a simple function any other time of the year. While walking past the local McDonald's, I noticed that instead of having only a handful of customers, there were no fewer than 20 mothers, each with a stroller with at least one child, sometimes two or more: no one else could get into the place for the traffic jam of moms & strollers. Families with strollers likewise jammed the local Subway, Dairy Queen and a handful of other small food spots. All before 11 AM. Abandoning any hope of eating today, I cut through JC Penny to get to the parking lot but found the place choked with so many senior citizens --and still more moms with strollers-- one would think the local senior center had been evacuated. This store is nearly empty any other time of the year... where were these people only two weeks ago?

I nearly ran out of gas getting out of the parking lot: the feeder roads are gridlocked with holiday shoppers, fighting their way into & out of Michael's, Home Depot, Chik-Fil-A and TGI Friday. I wanted to go further into downtown Frederick to fill the tank at the cheaper station on Route 85, but cars were backed up 3/4 of a mile from the intersection. Instead, I turned south and headed back to Urbana early: I'll pay extra to fill up at the local 7-11.

Except that the 7-11 was fully packed. All parking spots were full so many people were filling their tanks and leaving their cars at the pumps to go shopping at the convenience store instead of moving their vehicles out of the way for the rest of us. Cars were backed up onto Route 80 waiting to get into 7-11. Waiting impatiently, I eventually got to a pump to fill my car, but it was almost as brutal a battle to get out of the place as it was to get in.

These are minor annoyances but are part of the bigger issue: Christmas as a holiday is entirely out of control. It distorts normal commerce, impairs normal day-to-day life and promotes greed and selfishness cloaked in giving-for-giving's-sake and encourages emotional blackmail by instilling & leveraging guilt. Christmas has outlived its usefulness and, IMHO, is damaged beyond redemption. It's time to kill the damn thing and leave the corpse in the town square as a warning to the other holidays.

I'm in favour of replacing it with some other holiday, but only in the following format: there is no celebration on that day. The new holiday is simply to use to go home and do no shopping. Read a book, write a letter, go for a walk or vacuum the carpet. Anything you want, but no shopping.

I am done with Christmas. Christmas, you are dead to me. I can't wait for December 26 when you'll be dead to everyone else too, at least for another 365 days.

Comments

[beartalon.livejournal.com]

My immediate family all decided long ago not to exchange gifts as it was too expensive. We're seeing a resurgence in our giving now, but only because gift cards are convenient to mail. There was no point in sending huge packages back and forth before. Now an small easily-sent gift card can be send for a few cents more than normal postage.

Before this, we all sent our parents gifts or money for them to buy stuff they wanted. We still do this by choice. My nieces and nephews were given gifts only by their parents and some money by Grandparents (my parents). Children gave only to their parents. There never was a sense of having to buy for absolutely everyone and there was always a sense of economy and fairness.

Before this, when we were all children together, it was simple too. Everyone had one main gift, whether purchased by multiple people pooling money or some other means, everything else was simply stocking stuffers and no-one complained. Besides economy there was also graciousness: your list might have been 3 or 4 items long, and you didn't expect everything, and you appreciated that you were thought of, not upset that you didn't get a lot.

There also wasn't this strange adult "preferred gift list" that I've seen in some families, with the expectation that most of it would be fulfilled, as a short list doesn't mean the price tags are affordable. I find it even stranger when a similar list is given to friends, even close ones. It's really nice that someone wants a plasma TV, but it's not coming from me. If a friend was getting a similar list from me, it would show how little I need tanglible items and how much more I valued that freindship.

Guilt is usually self-imposed, and incredibly stupid when it requires you to put yourself in debt to keep up with the rest of the family's expectations.

Over the years my card list is cut down to those who actually send cards AND engage in some sort of correspondence between each successive Christmas. My budget is set across the board, with few exceptions, those being my partner, my parents and anyone who helped me out tremendously that year. This last doesn't need to be celebrated at Christmastime but it usually works out that way. Also, the budget is more relaxed but not extravagant even in those cases, as it's the thought and feeling that count most and that is best expressed in special, not necessarily expensive, gift selection.

I still endure the stupidity of the shopping masses, but I tend to go into it better prepared than most, and can usually be finished before the rush really hits. That gives me several quiet evenings just to anticipate the event and not worry about all the self-punishing behavious others seem to endure for their fleeting "happiness."