Why I Hate Christmas

December 24, 2008 12:10 PM

"Modern Christmas is like primitive Keynesianism, a short-run-oriented economic experiment that has been tried and found wanting." Economist James S. Henry weighs in on "Why the Grinch has it right."
posted by nasreddin (58 comments total)

I'm not a fan of Xmas* either, but this seems to not take into account the near universality of a winter festival in countries that experience seasonal weather/daylight shifts. Proposing something like this just means it'll shift to Thanksgiving in the US and/or New Year's, like it did in the Soviet Union.

Of course, I'm wondering how much of this is tongue-in-cheek and I'm just bitter at being at work and can't see the humor. I never know how much economists are being ironic or not.

Also, 'Christmas furs'? What? Is it 1890 here?

*(I prefer the Futurama version)
posted by cobaltnine at 12:19 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

This period's compulsory merriment, hypercommercialism, heavy drinking, and undue media emphasis on the idealized, two-child, two-parent, orthodox Christian family makes those who don't share such lifestyles or religious sentiments feel left out, lonely, and even somewhat un-American

I can't even tell you how much this resonates. I'm from a pretty typical two-child, two-parent suburban family... but since we're not Christian, this time of year always succeeds in making me feel like an outsider. At no other time of year do I feel different or excluded.

It was worse when I was a kid; I remember clearly my utter confusion over what to say when well-intentioned strangers asked me what I'd "asked Santa for."
posted by jacobian at 12:24 PM on December 24, 2008 [7 favorites]

> I never know how much economists are being ironic or not.

To be sure you'll have to read his followup publications, "Surprise Birthdays: Provably Counterproductive To Expedient Personal Financial Planning" and "Thanksgiving: The Outrageous Waste of Nourishment For No Material Gain".
posted by ardgedee at 12:29 PM on December 24, 2008 [13 favorites]

The "obligatory merriment" part is the worst for me. I'd opt out entirely, especially since I'm not Christian (but my family is), however the shaming I'd get is just not worth it.

I really know very few people (over the age of 15) that deeply enjoy Christmas. For most people it just seems to be a farce we play along with.
posted by desjardins at 12:29 PM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

*(I prefer the Futurama version)

It occurs to me that Futurama expresses the same sentiment as Henry.
posted by No Robots at 12:33 PM on December 24, 2008

"Published: December 31, 1990"

Written before the advent of online shopping. Savvy shoppers haven't had to deal with the holiday crowd for years now.

In before "bah humbug."
posted by mullingitover at 12:41 PM on December 24, 2008

You know what this means? It means orthogonality also has it right. Which I believe he has.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:42 PM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

I hadn't read the date before coming across this part:

Much of this rapidly depreciating toy capital consists of TV-show tie-ins (there are 350 separate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle products and scores more of Ghostbusters and Bart Simpson figures) and expensive gadgets that do not work or hold interest for more than a day. According to the toy association, the country now spends nearly as much on video games like Nintendo's Super Mario and Gameboy (nearly $4 billion), activity figures like World Wrestlers ($500 million), and dolls like Barbie and My Pretty Ballerina ($1.1 billion) as on all retail book sales ($6.6 billion).

I was like DANG I WAS AHEAD OF THE FUN CURVE AS A KID.

And then I saw 1990. //sad trumpet//
posted by resurrexit at 12:43 PM on December 24, 2008

In 2006, WSJ "asked 51 economists to speculate on what would happen if Christmas did not exist as a holiday. 45 percent said, 'Consumption would remain the same; people would spend more on other holidays, [such as birthdays].' 27 percent said, 'Consumption would decline, [and] saving would increase.' 16 percent said, "Consumption would remain the same; people would spend more on themselves.' And 12 percent said other things would happen." Cited here.
posted by terranova at 12:52 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I like Christmas. I LOVE Christmas.

THERE. I SAID IT.
posted by sararah at 12:53 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh but I do love this quote: "...each year there are thirty-three deaths and 148,000 emergency room admissions due to hazardous toys, plus 1.2 million toy recalls. ...The comparative figures for deaths caused by books and book recalls are zero and zero, respectively."

I just gave myself a really bad papercut across my jugular just to PROVE HIM WRONG.

Merry Christmas!
posted by sararah at 12:58 PM on December 24, 2008 [7 favorites]

According to the toy association, the country now spends nearly as much on video games like Nintendo's Super Mario and Gameboy (nearly $4 billion), activity figures like World Wrestlers ($500 million), and dolls like Barbie and My Pretty Ballerina ($1.1 billion) as on all retail book sales ($6.6 billion)

2008 projected US Toy sales:$22B
12 month US retail books sales: $17B

Both numbers are suspect to me, but I buy it.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:06 PM on December 24, 2008

The Annual Christmas Price Index for the 12 Days of Christmas gifts.
And The Economist asks "Is Santa a Deadweight Loss?"
posted by terranova at 1:09 PM on December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas y'all.
posted by caddis at 1:13 PM on December 24, 2008

Bah Fuckin' Humbug!
posted by ericb at 1:24 PM on December 24, 2008

The "Keep Christ in Christmas" people really irritate the hell out of me. We could have a perfectly fine, inclusive winter-solstice holiday, with family and eggnog and drinking and decorated trees and mythical fat home invaders bearing gifts, that everyone could find something to enjoy about it. But then those KoC freaks have to drag Jesus into it, and make everyone who isn't Christian vaguely uncomfortable. Like it's not enough for them to have co-opted the season in the first place, they have to continually rub everyone's noses in it.

If you don't take the whole thing too seriously, secular Christmas — which is 99% of it — can be a lot of fun.

Time to go refill my glass and hurl some more tinsel at the tree.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:24 PM on December 24, 2008 [23 favorites]

> Christmas consumes vast resources in the dubious and uncharitable activity of "forced giving.''

Come on, we need Christmas; otherwise, we'd have to be charitable for the entire year. What's next? Should we start expressing love (Valentine's Day) and gratitude (Thanksgiving) all year-round too? Slippery slope, James S. Henry. Slippery slope.
posted by shadytrees at 1:28 PM on December 24, 2008 [5 favorites]

Everyone hates Christmas. Once enough people say it out loud, we'll hit the tipping point and liberate ourselves. The emporer is naked! Now excuse me while I put together these toys for tomorrow's Santa extravaganza.
posted by Crotalus at 1:33 PM on December 24, 2008

Bah Humbug!
posted by MythMaker at 1:39 PM on December 24, 2008

To follow up on terranova's "Is Santa a Deadweight Loss?", here's a holiday classic for economists, The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.

There's also a good paper from a year or two ago from either the Journal of Economic Perspectives or the American Economic Review on the economics of gift cards, essentially arguing that for a Christmas present, you can't go too wrong with a gift card as it won't be valued less (the "deadweight loss", so to speak) and it still shows you put some thought into it (as opposed to cash).
posted by champthom at 1:45 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I have made cookies and bourbon-y eggnog and Cornish hens and visited with old friends and family and decorated a delicious smelling tree and bought all my damn gifts online. Christmas owns.

This is my first year where I've felt more joy from giving than from receiving gifts. It's also my first Christmas where I can legally drink, which is quite nice.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:04 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Um, this is a joke.

Also, The New Republic sucked then and sucks now. (Although I can remember a time when it was actually a good magazine.)
posted by languagehat at 2:05 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Before the thread started, I twittered "Why do the people who think there's a "War on Christmas" think it'll be more successful than the "War on Drugs" or the "War on Poverty"?" and MeFi's Own (I think) Dan Lyke replied: "because unlike the War on (Drugs/Poverty/Terror), the War on Christmas is waged by competents." And interesting thought especially since the Defenders of Christmas are the same people who organized some of our most unsuccessful Wars on Concepts.

I'm using twitter to attempt to force me into brevity. It's not working.
posted by wendell at 2:05 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Business? Mankind is my business."
posted by jquinby at 2:05 PM on December 24, 2008

And the Grinch, who STOLE everything Christmas-related from the Whos, is a Really Bad Example of Xmas Resistance. Maybe good for an Economist. Humbug, everybody!
posted by wendell at 2:08 PM on December 24, 2008

If Xmas is primitive Keynes, and Keynes did not work, then the Great Depression ended with WWII...should we hope for a big war rather than try Keynesian ideas?
posted by Postroad at 2:12 PM on December 24, 2008

You know what? For the most part, the Christmas season passes me by so quickly that I barely notice it, anymore (disclosure: I'm single, no kids). Thanksgiving comes, then I go back to work, and that leaves something like only 3 weekends before Christmas is upon me, by which point I've been busy enough with everything else that most of my Christmas shopping gets done on the last weekend before Dec. 25th, anyway. Honestly, I sort of wish I had spent more time doing "Christmasy" things... What would probably fix a lot of this would be if Christmas were celebrated in a more traditional fashion: by leaving the celebratory seasonal events for the 12 days after Christmas. Since my shopping and family visits would be over with, we could have more time and less stress being celebratory. The thing is though that the national culture seems to work against this. On the morning of Dec. 26th, you wake up, and the Christmas season is suddenly over. The songs on the radio come to an abrupt stop, the decorations come down, and it's like Christmas got whitewashed out of our collective memory until Thanksgiving comes around again.

those who don't share such lifestyles or religious sentiments feel left out, lonely, and even somewhat un-American

On a similar note, I imagine that most coastal city dwellers feel the same way for similar reasons every presidential election year.
posted by deanc at 2:15 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Um, this is a joke.

Right, but if you read it according to its author's (I think) tongue-in-cheek intent, it's supremely uninteresting, a lame duck Jon Swift argument. If you take it at its face value, though, it's actually a pretty interesting argument. Better to be charitable and try to come to terms with the troubling statistics he provides.
posted by voltairemodern at 2:21 PM on December 24, 2008

AGAIN we celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness, of the God of day over the hosts of night. Again Samson is victorious over Delilah, and Hercules triumphs once more over Omphale. In the embrace of Isis, Osiris rises from the dead, and the scowling Typhon is defeated once more. Again Apollo, with unerring aim, with his arrow from the quiver of light, destroys the serpent of shadow. This is the festival of Thor, of Baldur and of Prometheus. Again Buddha by a miracle escapes from the tyrant of Madura, Zoroaster foils the King, Bacchus laughs at the rage of Cadmus, and Chrishna eludes the tyrant.

This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.

This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions — the worship of the sun.

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.

The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.

This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.

All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.

Let us all hope for the triumph of Light — of Right and Reason — for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.

And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.

Robert Green Ingersoll - “The Agnostic Christmas” (1892)
posted by robbyrobs at 2:26 PM on December 24, 2008 [12 favorites]

The Grinch has it right

And on that inspiring note from Mr. Henry, let's all remember, at this time of the year, the uplifting words of Ed Meese when it comes to commenting on the meaning of Christmas:

"Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from bad press in his time. If you really look at the facts, he didn't exploit Bob Cratchit. Bob Cratchit was paid 10 shillings a week, which was a very good wage at the time... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. He lived in a house not a tenement. His wife didn't have to work... He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose and plum pudding... So let's be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn't unfair to anyone."

Obviously, Henry's article is written very tongue-in-cheek (whereas Ed Meese, bless his heart, was serious), and it's possible that he realizes the other layer on which his article works-- economists are rewarded for writing these "contrarian" articles that make very little sense and completely ignore human behavior and non-economic desires and actions that normal human beings take. This sort of article follows pretty much the same model as many other articles written by economists that appear in mainstream publications every week but attract less controversy and aren't obviously written in jest. However, they're just as absurd, but because they're less obviously absurd, they get taken seriously.
posted by deanc at 2:27 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

This period's compulsory merriment, hypercommercialism, heavy drinking, and undue media emphasis on the idealized, two-child, two-parent, orthodox Christian family makes those who don't share such lifestyles or religious sentiments feel left out, lonely, and even somewhat un-American.

Which is part of the reason I resist the mandatory parties, don't overbuy, don't drink or "consume" a lot of "media". Christmas is perfectly pleasant if you don't overdo it.

If people find me un-American, so be it. I still have my voting card and it is not yet compulsory to vote Republican.
posted by DU at 2:51 PM on December 24, 2008

"..attending parties with false cheer"

What kind of shitty christmas parties does this guy go to?
posted by autodidact at 2:56 PM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

Happy Hogswatch!

(I have enjoyed xmas since getting married; I do all of my shopping online, a blessing; we demand lists from everyone, which prevents a lot of the "WTF?" gifting that goes on; we do the holiday family thing the weekend before xmas which seems to relieve a lot of the stress of it being The Day; and my wife and I have a private gift exchange on xmas day which means I can ask for super-geeky stuff without having to explain to various family members that yes, 40-year-old men still do whatever it is the object is for.)
posted by maxwelton at 2:56 PM on December 24, 2008

Also, we're not Christian and I do enjoy reading the harumphy letters in the various papers from the batshitinsane about how what I do is some sort of desecration or whatever. If you want to say "merry christmas" to me, I'll accept it in the spirit it is offered; if you blanche at my returning an equally heartfelt "happy holidays" to you, well, frankly, I don't give a shit.
posted by maxwelton at 2:59 PM on December 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

OK men. Pitchforks and torches at the ready.
We march on sararah's house at 2300 hours.
If we're timely we'll get that damned santa too.
posted by notreally at 3:05 PM on December 24, 2008

We must focus our hatred on the true enemy, Christmas music.
posted by mek at 3:40 PM on December 24, 2008 [4 favorites]

So, I'm in Oklahoma with my SO's 79 year-old grandmother. (Fortunately, some kind soul with an unsecured wireless network saved me from this problem.) Grandma really likes Lifetime, and she is particularly keen on the "Falalala Lifetime" Christmas movie marathons they're showing.

These are pretty much the television version of romance novels, all set in the modern day. Almost all of them involve a powerful, successful woman realizing that that guy who keeps frustrating her is actually the love of her life and finally she can have that wedding she always dreamed of. (If you unfocus your eyes just right, you can almost keep your brain turning into jelly after a couple of hours.)

But, this is Falalala Lifetime! That means each and every one of these romances takes place around Christmas time, and a fair number of them involve the wedding, itself, actually taking place on Christmas. (Really, is this something real people do? Have their weddings on Christmas? I get the feeling that'd just piss off a bunch of potential guests and make your anniversary less special in the future.)

But what gets me is the way that Christmas is portrayed in all of these movies. It's not just some happy holiday where you eat too many cookies, get some presents, and maybe see some distant relatives you've not seen for ages... No, in all of these movies, every single person completely understands that Christmas is the only reason to live. The whole world revolves around Christmas. The only thing that could possibly matter throughout the entire year is Christmas. Every ten minutes or so, some character spouts trite comments about what christmas means -- not just to them, but what it clearly, obviously must mean to everyone. You just must feel uplifted about all humanity around Christmas time. You just must put any interpersonal issues aside for Christmas, get wrapped up in the warm feeling of complete and utter happiness, and feel your heart swell with unyielding love for all mankind on Christmas. And if you don't? Well... Geez. That makes you the villain of the show, doesn't it?

(Another weird thing is that, while the weddings mostly take place in churches, you're hard pressed to find a single reference to Jesus or Christianity in general in these movies. But that's another point.)

I like Christmas, when it's conceptualized as just a nice, lazy day involving cookies and presents. But, man. If I watched these movies regularly? Or if I actually knew anyone who thought the way these movies present everyone as thinking? The pressure would be way too much. The standards these movies present are just gross.

Now I can imagine how someone could be a total grinch, how the idea of a happy day for giving gifts could make some people so angry. And, man, am I glad I wasn't raised by any people who acted the "Falalala Lifetime" way.
posted by Ms. Saint at 3:47 PM on December 24, 2008 [6 favorites]

Christmas destroys the environment and innocent animals and birds.

WOW. Now THAT was a counter-argument to Christmas that I didn't see coming. WOULD SOMEONE THINK OF THE BIRDS?!

I'm pretty pro-Christmas. It's full of sparkly things! Sparkle sparkle! I really love giving people gifts. I'm so in love with making someone else happy that I have a severely difficult time WAITING until Christmas Day for the gift exchange because I want them to OPEN IT RIGHT NOW.

It wasn't until I got a Christmas gift from my boss (& associated kiddos) yesterday that I actually realized "Oh yeah. Christmas means *I* get presents too." It really hadn't occurred to me since I was having a good time finding just the right thing for everyone in my family. I think I did pretty well. We'll see... we're doing presents at midnight tonight as we've got a blended European/American thing going on.

Hint: If you're my Secret Quonsaree and you read this, plz MeMail me and at least let me know the gift made it to you! I'm on pins and needles! THNX.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:46 PM on December 24, 2008

I don't like Christmas.
posted by limeonaire at 4:55 PM on December 24, 2008

> ...The comparative figures for deaths caused by books and book recalls are zero and zero, respectively.

ebooks with lithium batteries will fix that right up. Don't smoke while you're reading in bed, and vice versa.
posted by jfuller at 5:52 PM on December 24, 2008

All of the gifts I gave or received this year (which are few; my family happily agreed to forgo gifts in favor of food, wine, and Wall-E) were books. Except for the book stand I received.

Can you smell my self-satisfaction?
posted by greenie2600 at 6:01 PM on December 24, 2008

Christmas is to be endured.
posted by the bricabrac man at 6:35 PM on December 24, 2008

Christmas is the perfect summation of Christianity. It has nothing to do with what Jesus was talking about long ago.

But I do like the Charlie Brown Christmas special. And this Kinks song. (Youtube links.) Because to greater or lesser extents they're both critiques of Christmas.
posted by bardic at 7:33 PM on December 24, 2008

i'd rather do the gift giving instead of the old pagan fuck in a crowd rituals.

outside of the STD factor, i just don't want to scare children and small animals
with my moaning and grunting. oh, and it's less messier too :)
posted by liza at 7:45 PM on December 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you ignore the religious content of Christmas, the fact that after Dec 21 the days start to get longer is of fairly major significance, especially in a place as cold as Canada. It may be -25C outside and 3' of snow on the driveway, which I have to blow soon, but AT LEAST THE DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER.

I for one welcome the return of the sun and am happy to give thanks by getting drunk, spending money, and stuffing myself.
posted by unSane at 10:42 PM on December 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.
Heresy; it is the proto-fascist creed of the bloodthirsty invaders who desecrate the shrines of our Mother Earth and drive us from the bounty of her open plains and forest, which they ring with fences and boundary markers, slash and burn and seed with alien crops to sate the hungry maw of their Empire.
posted by Abiezer at 11:10 PM on December 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

I have just experienced my first proper christmas since I was kid.
Christmas is: getting a huge complicated toy-gift everyone is exited about especially the giving parent, that doesn't work due to batteries, cables or other missing peripherals and then staring at the useless colorful plastic widget all day wondering what the fuss is about until the shops open again and parents can get missing widget.
posted by dabitch at 6:33 AM on December 25, 2008

I adore Christmas; it's one of the highlights of my year.

Talk about harumphy letters. The critics of Christmas, in their tiresome sameness, are as predictable and perennial as the customs they claim to detest.

What I find ironic is that when people deride aspects of the Christmas holiday that they imagine to be important, they are accepting some outwardly defined version of what the celebration should be - and, in essence, reinforcing the very qualities they claim to hate. To me, this always says more about the decriers of Christmas as individuals than about the holiday itself.

Christmas is a complicated, wildly varying ancient feast with strong universal components. You can have whatever kind of Christmas you want. No one forces anyone to observe it in a Christian manner, to purchase gifts, or to participate in rituals which feel empty. My Christmas is not remotely a "Keynesian experiment," and if you don't like the role of feast days in the economy, there's no need to participate. It's possible to negotiate with it. Life is short and many days are empty of joy and celebration. Finding and doing something you care about, in observance of the essence of the holiday itself - the recognition of signs, natural/spiritual/astronomical/or what-have-you, that a future exists and that alone is reason to be joyful and hopeful.

We create our Christmases.
posted by Miko at 7:30 AM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

if you read it according to its author's (I think) tongue-in-cheek intent, it's supremely uninteresting

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction. And providing a random venue for everyone to talk about how much they hate/love the holiday is also pretty uninteresting. But whatever: it's the Xmas season, far be it from me to deny anyone their hate/love!

Also, I got the Criterion DVD set of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz for Xmas, so I'm in the love camp!
posted by languagehat at 9:52 AM on December 25, 2008

As far as I'm concerned, Christmas is a time to go to parties, eat excellent food, and see friends that I haven't seen in a while. It's also a time to curl up on the couch with my wife and sleepily watch the jade tree that we've decorated, while the cats lazily stretch and beg to be petted. It's a time to sleep late, eat a nice unhurried breakfast, and then trade the small presents we bought each other. The presents aren't expensive this year, just small things we know the other will like.

I think it's a good thing, especially in this day and age to take a day to relax and appreciate the people and things that are important in one's life. It doesn't require commercialism, Christianity, or massive rushing around. Just quiet love and rejoicing that we've gone through another year together.
posted by happyroach at 10:53 AM on December 25, 2008

What I got for Christmas: a nice survival knife, an emergency fishing kit, a Leatherman Surge with extra bit kit, 22 different LED lights (overreaction to a recent power outage), and 700 comic books. I can use the survival knife to kill zombies and cannibals, the Leatherman Surge to construct a new home, the fishing kit to catch some fish to eat, and a lot of comic books to read under the LED lights. ;)
posted by jamstigator at 11:51 AM on December 25, 2008

desjardines writes: I really know very few people (over the age of 15) that deeply enjoy Christmas. For most people it just seems to be a farce we play along with.

That stuff in Isaiah about being led by children was not a throw-away line. The spirit of the child, in his or her simple wonderment and cooperation, is precisely what is supposed to take over us at Christmas, Christians or not. Where there are adults who enjoy Christmas, they enjoy it because they still look at seeing family members as a joy, at giving as more pleasurable than receiving, etc.

To the thread: I get it, the world sucks at Christmas and Jesus wouldn't want us trampling people at Wal-Mart. This is true. But getting to the meaning of Christmas, just like getting to the meaning of anything, requires digging deep into the heart of the thing, not surveying people's reactions to it. For any good Christian, this digging is both the purpose of a yearly holiday and a process which never ends.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:08 PM on December 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

Are we talking about our loot? My mama gave me a DVD of autopsies and I nearly wet myself with glee. That was a difficult moment to explain to the in-laws. "Um yes. I like death. In a totally... healthy... and normal... sort of way." (I've seriously considered "mortician" as a possible career option, but thus far, working with kids is pretty rad.)

Another winner: When 'moonMan accidentally opened one of my gifts. And of course, it was the yearly sparkly Christmas underpants that my mama gives me. I've gotten underpants and pajamas every Christmas of my life - why stop now that the in-laws are in town? Me opening them would have been marginally embarrassing. 'moonMan opening them, and then holding them over his head shouting "I DON'T THINK THESE ARE MINE" was enough to make me wish to become a subject in the autopsy movie.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:00 AM on December 26, 2008

Xmas is much less fun for me now that I'm 32, single, and self-employed. I truly dislike children, they bug the living shit out of me.

The biggest problem from my POV is how long it goes on. Christmas music starts playing in November and people don't get back to their normal work routine until mid-January. Every year I have clients delay projects "just until after Xmas" and then it's a struggle getting them refocused in the new year.

This year I decided not to drink too much on Xmas day at my sister's house, so that I could drive home rather than crashing on a spare bed. Wouldn't you know it, my fucking tire blows up at midnight as I'm pulling down the street, and I'm forced to stay around anyways. So I didn't get to drink or go home, the worst of both worlds.

That seems to be the way of my life. Everything's just a big frustrating cocksuck lately, and I honestly wonder if karma is not trying to tell me something.
posted by autodidact at 10:26 AM on December 26, 2008

Hrm, that was pretty negative. On the upside I greatly enjoy all the parties, and making eggs benedict for my parents on Xmas morning. I like people-watching at the mall. I also really enjoy finding gifts for people... I usually go for "you would love this but never think of getting it for yourself" books and movies.
posted by autodidact at 10:30 AM on December 26, 2008

The biggest problem from my POV is how long it goes on. Christmas music starts playing in November and people don't get back to their normal work routine until mid-January.

Hear, hear. Every year I'm already bored with Christmas by Thanksgiving, and by Dec. 25th I'm sick to death of it. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if they could just wait until after Thansgiving, but I know that'll never happen.
posted by homunculus at 1:15 PM on December 26, 2008

Today I saw Valkyrie with my dad, which was nice. Then I stuck around for dinner at home and my mom ruined everything by trying for the millionth time to recruit me into her commercial cult. I resisted, she started ridiculing me, and the next thing I knew a red rage had taken over. So Xmas is definitely over...

PS MANNATECH IS A FUCKING CULT
posted by autodidact at 7:11 PM on December 26, 2008

Here's a little treat for all the grinches: Christmas Griping by REM.
posted by caddis at 9:20 PM on December 26, 2008