|
"What else can I be? I live in a world of fools. 'Merry
Christmas'-- out upon Merry Christmas! Tell me nephew, what's
Christmas to you? What good has it ever done you? You're a year
older and not an hour richer. You have bills to pay and not
a penny to pay them with."
- Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol
"All the Who's down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot,
but the Grinch who lived north of Whoville - did not."
- Narrator (Boris Karloff), How The Grinch Stole Christmas
"If I had my way, every idiot who goes around with "Merry
Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding
and buried with a stake of holly through his heart! "
- Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol
"Enough with the 'Merry Christmas' willya? I'd like to
take a candy cane and beat the wings off of a sugar plumb fairy."
- Oscar Madison from The Odd Couple's Christmas Episode
"I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish,
gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas,
and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
the prisons and the workhouses, -- they cost enough, -- and
those who are badly off must go there."
- Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol
"For 53 years I've put up with this now! I have to stop
Christmas from coming....but how?"
- The Grinch, How The Grinch Stole Christmas
December 8th, 2002
The Holidays.
I sit here today on the twenty-second anniversary
of John Lennon's death contempating when to start my shopping
for the holidays. I'm certainly not in the mood for it. I
have a rough decision to make. Should I either go Christmas
shopping today or should I stick one of my appendages in an electrical
socket? Decisions, decsions. These are the days I regret not taking
advantage of Amazon.com.
Now, before you make any rash judgements about
me, let me get a couple words in edgewise like these - "Christmas
Shopping Sucks". I'm sure that there are many of you out
there that agree with me.
I am not one of these people that shops in July
to get all of my shopping out of the way because I can't be
like that. One, usually, I don't have the money to spend at
the time and, two, - Who actually does shopping that early?
Well, outside of my mother.
My mother, the cruel tease that she is, will
ask me months in advance what I want for Christmas. And every
year I make the same mistake over and over again - I tell her.
For me, it's a no win situation. Let me tell you why.
When you tell someone months in advance the one
thing you want for the holiday, you basically can't tell anyone
else that item or you get duplicates. So the logical thing to
do is to give her a low priority item. If
I get it - fine, if I don't get it - fine. That would be the
smart thing to do. I never do that. I tell her straight off
exactly what I want, and know that I'll be disappointed if I
don't get it from anyone. This also means that I'll neglect
to tell my wife that item because, I know it'll be taken care
of by my mother. So, I'll wait with much anticipation for the
one gift I really want that I told the first person who asked.
And that would be my mother.
So, what happens? I'll ask for a CD and get a
sweater. Plus, no one else will get me that CD because they
don't know to get it for me.
The other mistake is to tell her items with the
phrase, "not" or "but". I had an entire
Christmas filled with these and lived to regret it. I asked
my mother for a suit - Any color but brown. "I would
like a watch - not a digital watch, one with hands. I'd
like a sweater - any color but green. I'd like a tape
player, not an 8-track. Get me a Cat Stevens CD, the
only one I have is "The Very Best Of Cat Stevens".
So don't get me that one. I already have it."
Ask me how much I like my brown suit, digital
watch, green sweater, and 8-track player. Oh, and by the way,
does anyone want my extra copy of, "The Very Best Of Cat
Stevens"? Now, I settle for comic books or anything else
I could use an extra of.
But that's me and my annual holiday disappointment.
This rant is about shopping.
Peace on earth and good will toward man. May
the idiot who first came up with that phrase be feeling every
worm bite in his coffin. If I were to write a paper on the human
condition and the very worst I can see, I'd park my ass in a
mall and just observe. People are at their very worst during
the holidays.
But don't believe me. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell
me that it's my imagination. Tell me I'm jaded. Tell me the
one about the three little pigs. Because it would be a fairy
tale to me.
I live a stone's throw from the Freehold Raceway
Mall, Target, The Wiz, Bob's Sports, CompUSA, and (my favorite)
Barnes & Noble. Every year it's the same thing. People forget
how to drive for the entire month of December. All of those
people are now driving near me. In the month of December, just
getting in a car can be an adventure. However, I'll overlook the
fact that every car's signaling system seems to short out all
at the same time and that all of their rear view mirrors are
not working in exchange for a parking space anywhere within
walking distance of a store.
Actually, I have a parking spot.
My wife and I have found a blind spot in our
local mall. We don't know how or why this occurs but for some
reason, people won't park near Sears. The parking spots near
Macy's, JC Penney, Structure, and the Limited all are packed but
Sears is like kryptonite for people parking cars. If you're
ever looking for either of our cars look around Sears and you'll
find them. Plus, we always know where we parked our cars.
My wife and I have made a pact as well. If either
one of us doesn't get exactly what he or she wanted to get for
the other because it didn't arrive on time or because they were
out, it was okay. If it was coming later, we'd wait. If they
were out - so what? And sometimes it's cheaper to wait until
after the holidays. It's that much less stress for the holiday.
What I really can't stand is all of the pushing,
shoving, long lines, obnoxiousness, greed, programming, and
general crap that is being perpetuated by Madison Avenue. "Nothing
says 'I love you' like a diamond." "The Spirit of
Giving" "He knows when you've been sleeping, He knows
when you're awake."* There is so much anger and hate during
the holidays, I'm surprised that we can even squeeze in the
peace, love, and goodwill. I am certain of a couple of things
this holiday. I know that I will make at least one death threat
to a stranger; I will shove an old lady; and I will most likely
trip a child intentionally just because I was ticked. Take that,
Lizzie Grubman.
Rootie toot toot and rummy tum tum.
We have become so programmed to give during the
holidays, it is literally a long term brainwashing technique
reperpetuated every November to December. And that is the start
time. The moment all of the Halloween Ads are taken down, all
of the Christmas Ads go up. I remember going to the mall at
the beginning of November and seeing their Christmas tree assembled.
My wife and I have become so jaded that we were frightened after reading the beginning of Dickens' Christmas
Carol. It's scary when you start to think - Hmmmmm, Scrooge has a point. But
that can't be it - can it?
What I do know is that my company almost scheduled
a program release and forgot that December 25th was Christmas.
I audibly said in a meeting, "A poor excuse for picking
a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December is what it is.
But I suppose if you must have the whole day...you'd better
be here that much earlier on the next day...." I stopped
my self shortly before saying something about "decreasing
the surplus population by one".
I'm just a bright f%#@king ray of sunshine.
I suspect that with all of this reflecting on
Dickens that I'll probably go to bed on the 24th and be visited
by three spirits that will throw up their hands in frustration
and leave depressed.
I don't want to leave you all thinking that I'm
a heartless monster, though. I do really have some amount of
kindness in my heart during the holidays. I try to put on the
happy face and greet all with a "Merry Christmas"
and have some kind of Yuletide spirit. I'll be the first to
pass the egg nog and hand out a card. I will wish everyone Happy
Chanunkah, Yuletide, and a Merry Christmas**.
After all, if you have to find one time of the
year to be nice, why not do it when everyone else seems to be an asshole.
______________________________________________________________________________________
* - I suggest any child really into Santa Claus should read
George Orwell's 1984 and refer to Big Brother.
**- I do refuse to wish people a Good Kwanzaa, however. It
is a made up holiday that came about in the 60's. Elements ripped
off from Chanukah. Why not just go with the rest of the pagans
and go with Yule? Yule at least has been around longer than
Christmas.
|
