Ho-Ho-Holy Crap, it’s Christmas
‘Tis the day before Christmas
And all through our flat
Not a damned thing is ready
What’s up with that?
Boy did Christmas ever sneak up on me this year. We barely have our tree up. Until this week, it’s seemed like Christmas was still a month away. I am so not ready for this.
Most years (this one included), I am so buried in work and day-to-day minutiae that I feel like I’ve hardly digested Thanksgiving dinner by the time Christmas comes around. The whole thing rolls right past me, and despite my best efforts to the contrary, I find myself standing in an enormous line somewhere on Christmas Eve, angry for the half hour of my life I just wasted trolling for a parking spot.
In my adulthood, I’m becoming jaded with Christmas - or “giftmas” as I’ve taken to calling it. It hardly seems worth the trouble; trading greeting cards by mail that no one really wants to write, worrying about what to buy people, the stories of parents fighting other parents for this year’s “gotta have” toy… I’m not saying I don’t enjoy giving gifts (quite the contrary) but it seems that more and more, we’re all just going through the motions. Christmas is supposed to be about peace, but there’s never a moment’s peace for most of us this time of year.
At this time last year, I had been unemployed for two months. We were draining our savings and racking up credit card debt just to pay the bills. We were about four to six weeks from completely broke. It sucked. Needless to say, there were not many Christmas gifts. But for probably the first time in my adult life, I noticed the cool evenings, the lights going up on houses, and the carols on the radio. And there were no last-minute trips to the mall to sour my love for humankind. My wife and I spent several evenings just driving around the neighborhoods looking at light displays, and drinking hot cocoa. The night we drove around lost in the hills with the rain pouring down is the greatest Christmas memory I have since childhood.
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!
Next year - don’t buy me anything. Spend that time going for a drive, or making eggnog, or watching that corny “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” cartoon. Celebrate and enjoy yourself. Be at peace.
Buy Bye for now.
December 27th, 2003 at 11:20 pm
How did you come across the AZ Central link?
January 6th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
Oops! I totally forgot to answer this. Sorry man!
Actually, all I did for this post was check out totalfark on Christmas Eve for submissions that were related to Christmas in some way. As you can see, there were quite a few.