Welp, whether I am ready for it or not (I am not ready), the "holiday season" is upon us. I firmly don't believe that Christmas decorations should be sitting on shelves while Halloween candy is still on sale, but I am apparently in the minority. It's not that I don't like Christmas! I do! I really like Christmas. But there are a lot of things that I don't like about it, too, and two solid months of the things I hate makes me build up resentment for the holiday as a whole and the things I like are usually crushed by all the things I hate about the 12th time I hear Feliz Navidad.
Favorite Things:
- Cute Christmas crafts
- Candles
- Fires in the fireplace
- Coffee Christmas morning while gazing at the tree all lit up in the dark (with the dog fence around it because we still don't trust those beasts not to ruin everything while we sleep)
- Decorating
- Christmas lights
- Watching "A Year Without a Santa Clause," "A Christmas Story," "Christmas Vacation," and the claymation "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" while baking Christmas cookies with my mom.
- Eating all the Christmas cookies.
- Putting Christmas clothes on the dogs "to keep them warm." Not because it's cute as heck! That's not why at all.
- Making gifts, keeping in mind things I am good at - cooking and embroidery. You will receive no oddly-shaped scarves from me.
- Eating and drinking with my family members all afternoon.
Least Favorite Things:
- Christmas music everywhere.
- Christmas music starting any point before Thanksgiving, although I wish it were only played the week before Christmas.
- Inflatable characters in front yards. It drives the poor dogs crazy.
- When it looks like Christmas had a stroke and then puked all over someone's house.
- Finding gifts for everyone, but mostly people I know well enough to buy them a Christmas gift but not well enough to know what's perfect for them. Uuuuuugh, so stressful.
- How everyone behaves in public. I thought it was a time for CHEER, not shoving your shopping cart towards my car after you unload all your crap, having meltdowns over whether some stupid toy is on sale, or storming through a store like a tornado and literally mowing people down when they wander into your path. I pretty much hate leaving my home during this time of year.
- Wrapping gifts. If this is your favorite thing, I hate you. Maybe if you got stuck wrapping everyone's gifts for everyone but you on Christmas Eve night, you wouldn't love it so much, you jerk.
- How Thanksgiving totally gets the shaft. It's only the best holiday of the year, because it has all the fun of family and food and drinking but it's not nearly as expensive or stressful, but all of the turkeys and squash and pumpkin pies get trotted out in the middle of all the baubles and sequins and buche de Noel of Christmas, totally don't fit in, and then just kind of sulk off into the cardboard box from whence they came while everyone is making turkey and cranberry sandwiches the next day. Poor Thanksgiving.
So? Am I big communist jerk for the things on this list or what? What are your thoughts on the holiday season?
Love it!! I totally agree with all of your likes and dislikes... except, I kind of enjoy wrapping the first three or four presents. After that I don't like it anymore, though, because I also always get stuck wrapping everyone's gifts. One year I even had to wrap my own gifts (after they'd been put into indistinguishable boxes). Not nice.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I also love that I can go to Colorado, where it is a winter wonderland, have a white Christmas, then come back to the land of palm trees and have coffee outside with only a jacket.