Oh the Joy of the Holiday Season….Whatever…
Christmas is a time of peace and love and joy. Family gatherings, parties with your closest friends, toasts of eggnog, exchanging of gifts, the singing of carols. Christmas Day feasts of turkey and ham, cranberry sauce and trays of Christmas cookies. Christmas cards send with love, pictures and newsletters and the visiting of relatives from out of state.
My ass.
Christmas feels like that when you’re five years old and you’re oblivious to the stress and drama of it all. Hit your 30’s and you can experience some or all of the following fun, Christmas-spirit episodes:
Juggle visiting five different households. Why five? Because both your and your husband’s parents are divorced, plus you have your dear friends who actually bring a little sanity to your life and whose home is honestly the ONLY stop you’d like to make for Christmas. But no, parental guilt kicks in and you find yourself having four dinners in 24 hours, four glass of eggnog (you hate eggnog), smiling graciously at the two sweaters that will be going straight to Goodwill, a drum set for your son which will be mysteriously disappearing and a chemistry set for your daughter which you are pretty sure will be burning at least three holes in her bedroom carpet if not scarring the kitchen table for life.
Those fucking Christmas cards. You get your list down to the bare minimum and yet it’s still six days before Christmas and you still haven’t sent them. So why do you even bother? Jesus Christ – who’d know it would be so hard to address and stamp some cards. But then you don’t want them to be totally impersonal, so you find yourself calling your great-aunt to find out the names of your second-cousin’s 7 kids (Damn Mormon) and hunting for the address for the cousin who flipped out and moved to New Mexico. What the hell is up with your cousins anyways??
Office potluck parties. Really? Christ almighty – the same people who don’t wash their hands after they take a piss are bringing in mini hotdogs rolled in crescent rolls, thumb-print cookies, hand-dipped chocolate pretzels and chex mix. Because I truly have an appetite after thinking about your pee-and-shit laden hands touching the food you have prepared. Yummy.
How much alcohol can you really consume? Between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you estimate you drink the equivalent of three bottles of wine, half a bottle of Captain, ten bottles of water and 8 cups of coffee. What is it with Uncle Larry who thinks you should start cocktail hour at 9:00 in the morning with his disgusting egg nog concoction, moving right onto Captain and Coke so that by Noon you are wasted and falling asleep in front of the fire? Do you know what happens when you have two glass of eggnog followed by three glasses of Captain and Coke? The contents of your stomach curdle and you want to puke your guts out. Really. I’ve been there. It sucks.
Traveling. If you are one of the millions who travel somewhere else for Christmas – you enjoy that. This is the one time of the year I am so glad I live in Ohio, a whopping 7 minutes from my parents’ house because I don’t think there’s enough Yuletide fucking Love to make me want to cram my shit into one suitcase, sweat my ass off in my winter coat in an airport terminal and wonder how stinky my sweating feet are getting my snow boots as I stand in security, before boarding a plane built 35 years ago yet modified to hold 50 more people so that we are a pack of not-so-happy sardines in a tin can that will probably not even manage a take off in an ice storm, with the heat set at 80 and 69% of the passengers battling head colds, spreading their germs in the reconstituted air, just so you can spend three days at home with the happy family, fighting over the last Advil Cold & Sinus pill with your sister and bitching that you packed for an Ohio winter yet it’s Sunny and 50 degrees outside.
Happy Holidays.
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Hey! I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your post.
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A really positive and honest perspective like this deserves good feedback. Like your blog design too, anything you can tell me about it, looking for help. Bravo, happy Christmas, can you collect your own cards from my blog? Sorry. I said help was needed.
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Your comment about the office potluck parties really cracked me up. I’ll have to remember that next time I attend one. Of course if you’re into golden showers it might be considered a golden opportunity.
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Well, that sounds like fun…NOT! Happy Holidays to you too SJ
. I shall make a post about how it is this season for me.
Diana´s last blog ..Another birthday
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