Spinster

I hate the holiday season. It is the most unbearable time of year–all of the forced cheer and goodwill, coupled with an insane urge to max out your credit cards on crap neither you nor your friends or family wants or needs, plus the shortest days of the year? Ugh. Take it. All of it.

From my (very) limited time in Canada, the holiday season is a bit different here than in the States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls in early October, before Halloween, which is key. Clearly, you cannot get worked up about Christmas before Halloween. That just ain’t right. From what I can tell, there’s no real defined beginning of the holidays, just a gradual slide into it, so that while you were busy doing stuff (school, work, drinking, whatever), the ads on TV have somehow morphed into “diamonds are a girl’s best friend and if you love your woman you had better buy her some”, really lame Christmas movies (The Holiday, Santa Clause 3, I’m looking at you), and improbably expensive electronic gadgets that you or your spouse or your kid can’t live without crap that they roll out for the season. So then you look up, and there you are, in the thick of it. You kind of feel blindsided, cause where you come from (God’s chosen land), there is one weekend, one day, one moment that brings it all to a head.

I’m talking, of course, about Thanksgiving weekend, the day after Thanksgiving and, let’s say, oh, 4 am on Black Friday, when serious shoppers are already lined up outside of Wal Mart or Old Navy or whatever. I’ve never actually been to a mall on Black Friday–I try to never even leave the house on that day–but I imagine it’s something of a feeding frenzy. Every year, you hear stories about how some lady got trampled at Toys “R” Us because a horde of insane parents literally ran over her while trying to get the last Baby Elmo tamagotchi thing (I have no idea what I’m talking about). It’s fucking disgusting, but you have to admit, Americans are capable of taking anything to the next level. God bless America, as I always say.

If you are someone who is prone to depression, especially in the winter when the days are short and the sunlight is weak; doesn’t believe in Christ and doesn’t give a flying fuck about God; and generally has a pessimistic (which I try to argue is just realism by another name) outlook on the world, the holiday season is pretty much hell.

And so, without further ado, I give you my list of the 5 worst things about the holidays:

5. The insane emphasis on family. I mean, what the fuck? I love my parents and my brother, but let’s be honest about how much time we can spend together before killing each other and/or ourselves. Is it really a coincidence that my mother grew up in New York state and currently lives in Miami, where she is (geographically but, it also happens, emotionally) close to exactly one of her blood relatives; that my father is from England and currently lives in Miami and last saw his family at his brother’s funeral in 1999, and only accompanied my mother, my brother, and I to visit our maternal grandparents and the rest of my mom’s family like twice; that I went to college in Portland, Oregon, and am attending grad school in Toronto?

Don’t get me wrong, I do really love my family and we actually get along surprisingly well. But that’s because we have a little agreement. It’s called Leave Me The Fuck Alone And I Won’t Make You Regret Buying Me That Plane Ticket Home. As in, I am more than happy to do some “traditional” family stuff–I’ll go to my uncle’s house for Thanksgiving or Christmas day, but you have to expect that I will bring a book or my knitting and that I will, without fail, drink steadily throughout the day to maintain a consistent buzz. We don’t do family reunions, we don’t do family movie night (unless we are in Georgia, where we are forced to, and you try picking out 10 sex-free movies in a row because, even though you are 25 years old and haven’t been a virgin in almost a decade, you still cannot endure the thought of watching a movie with sex jokes or naked breasts in it with your parents), and we don’t hug–unless we are saying good-bye or hello at an airport, and rest assured that it is more often than not uncomfortable for all parties involved. My parents are disciples of the hands-off, or laissez faire, school of parenting, and that suits us all just fine.

4. The fucking commercials. Oh my God. As if buying your wife a diamond necklace, or buying your husband a car or a drill or whatever it is you buy for men, or buying your kid the latest video game console really means anything. It so doesn’t. I hate holiday ads–they reek of empty promises and false security. . . .Of course our marriage is fine. He bought me a diamond bracelet! . . . My dad sure does love me–he bought me the new PlayStation! . . . Bullshit bullshit bullshit. I like receiving gifts as much as the next person, of course, but the day I equate a piece of jewelry with a statement of love is the day I die. Buy me a camera or a new lens or something. That says love, right? No? Weird. I thought it did.

3. The Christmas movies with the stupid fucking message about how grateful we should all be for our family because even though they drive us crazy they still love us and just want us to be happy(see #5, above) or how we should still believe in Santa Claus because we are all children at heart or whatever. Enough said.

2. The music. I worked at a deli in Portland for a while, and I was there for one Christmas season. We had like eighteen different Muzak channels, and there was this one that played nothing but wordless Christmas songs. So, more like Christmas tunes. Imagine someone humming the tune of “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things,” or “The Little Drummer Boy,” or “Silent Night.” All day long. Without ever singing. I wanted to kill myself. I actually like traditional Christmas carols; I think they can be pretty and sweet and blah blah blah. But when they are repeated ad nauseum, it makes me want to curl up in a corner and cry.

There are endless variations on the theme of Shitty Christmas Music. Like, I think that every boy band and pop singer is required to release one Christmas album during their career. Yeah, I definitely need to hear 98 degrees’ take on the worst season ever. Or Celine Dion’s. Just shoot me now.

Or how about the dogs and cats barking/meowing to the tune of “Jingle Bells”? I mean, does it get any worse than that?

1. The fact that once you get through Christmas, you have to deal with New Year’s, which is always–ALWAYS–disappointing. Like the time–first and only–I did acid on New Year’s Eve in 9th grade, and while it was super fun and hilarious at first, I ended up having a panic attack for about two hours at 6 o’clock in the morning cause I had been tripping for 12 hours. [What kind of idiot combines an anxiety-prone personality and hallucinogens, anyway? I can't even smoke pot without having paranoid fantasies that everyone I'm with is sitting there thinking about how pathetic I am (yes, the world does in fact revolve around me). Though I guess that never really stopped me from inhaling in high school. It also explains my love of the alcohol. It and the fact that my heritage (English, Irish, Scottish, German, and Polish) means that you couldn't keep me away from booze if you tried.]

Or like the time I was in New Orleans with my then-boyfriend, but we weren’t 21, so we had to sneak into a bar and drink vodka that we’d brought with us, and I got so drunk that after we stumbled onto Bourbon Street for the countdown, all I could think of to do was go back to the (shittiest) hostel (in the world) and go to bed. We were in bed at 12:15 am on New Year’s. In New Orleans. Is that even legal?

Now that I’ve done my job and spread Christmas cheer to the 3 people who were unfortunate enough to come across this blog, let me reveal my one reason why the holiday season doesn’t suck:

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

I mean, come on, is it not one of the best movies of all time? The National Lampoon’s franchise has seen better days, but when they got it right they nailed it. (My other favorite NL is, of course, Animal House. Love it. A pure and true love that cannot be tainted by things like National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, and the Vann Wilder “series.”) Anyway, I present NLCV as a contender for Best Holiday Movie. That and the original Grinch movie. None of this Jim Carrey overacting glitzy crap. Just some simple animation and lots of Grinchy love. I mean, hate.

Ok, this post is too long already and I’m tired from my long day of napping and knitting.