Fundamentally, I have no problem with Christmas. If you think of it as a religious holiday, it's fine. Let the religious people have it however they like. Midnight mass or consume mass quantities, do as you will. I generally agree with "put Christ back in Christmas" which means that I just won't be involved.
I'm not Christian. I'm not religious in any real sense. I have some pseudo-spiritual beliefs (such as an idea of souls, demons living under Philadelphia, and the wonderment of cosmic coincidences), but I am an atheist. At most, I'm an atheist with a good imagination and healthy skepticism. So I'm open to the supernatural and strange, I would just need some convincing.
So then there's Christmas. All the ritual and tradition and obligation. Since I'm not Christian, the ritual does nothing for me. Since my family history is disjointed, I don't really ascribe to many traditions (we listen to "Alice's Restaurant" on Thanksgiving, we roll down the windows and yell when driving through a tunnel, etc). And because I'm a self-centered shit most of the time, I don't care much for obligations.
In fact, obligations are kind of the wedge between me and every close relationship I've had. There's always some point in a relationship where I point out that I choose to be in the relationship, to take on the responsibilities, etc. And that raises the question of "what if you choose to not?" It creates doubt, limits trust. I get it. But I also have integrity. I'm stubborn. So the things I choose to commit to, I stick to. I have friends I barely see who I promised I would take care of, and there's this rule--if they need something, they ask (in return, if I show up on their doorstep covered in blood [not mine], they give me a towel and don't ask questions). I commit, I keep my commitments.
But the holiday obligations drive me nuts. They generally involve:
- Spend time with your extended family.
- Buy presents for everyone you know.
- Eat their food.
- Create a bunch of holiday-themed shit (cookies, cards, etc).
- Listening to that goddamned fucking genre of music.
- Watch specific movies.
- Pretend to be nice to strangers for some reason.
And there are more, I'm sure. If you're slightly religious, you've got to go to mass or something similar.
First, as you may know, I don't really like most of my extended family. I mean, they're fine, but I have so goddamned many of them. My father was the 4th of 10 kids, and they all had a heap of kids, so I have something like 40 cousins on that side. And now they all have kids, so there are probably 100 people I have to keep track of just on my father's side of the family (they're starting to die, so maybe only 97 now). I went three years without remembering my cousin Sue's name. I was an adult--I had no excuse. My mother was the first of nine kids, and almost all of those people have a playing card deck of hang-ups, from proper mental problems to just being an asshole. And a lot of them are married to people with the other half of the deck. My granny's house is a crucible of chaos and while usually entertaining, is super stressful. You have to remember that so and so is going through another divorce and that one cousin can't come because his girlfriend (who is here) took out a restraining order. Also, aunt Char thinks the flower planting kit you got her is coffee and now she's mad at you because the coffee sucks. And then you leave that house reeking of cigarette smoke because--although no one is supposed to smoke in the house because Granny had a triple bypass and her doctor said so--everyone smokes on the porch and it just bellows into the house and you can't get away from it.
I have a hard time justifying buying presents for my wife's great aunt who I think I only met once and is probably dead? Also, it's a lot of money. Also, why wait until an arbitrary date to do presents? If you want to get someone something, get it for them because they're awesome and it's a Tuesday. The obligation to buy presents created the gift card industry. "I don't know what to get my sister's boyfriend's kids, so I'll just get them an iTunes gift card." I told a coworker who was stressed about what to get her nieces and nephews to just get them all plain, black, Old Navy socks. A 6-pack of them. Every year. And a five dollar bill. BE THAT AUNT. Because she'll be the best aunt in the world when those kids are in college and all they need are decent fucking socks and five fucking dollars to get a couple of hot dogs at the Sheetz because their student loan money ran out. I just hate having to buy things for people. I'd rather choose to do it because I want to and I think they'll like it.
My mother-in-law makes the same couple of things every time we visit for a holiday: egg casserole and cream cheese danish. Sometimes she makes a version of "creme brulee French toast" which is just french toast covered in liquid sugar and slightly burned, but really just bread and syrup. They're not good. I don't eat eggs in their primary form (with butter and flour and sugar they're fine, but not just eggs with heat and salt), so her egg casserole, which includes onions and peppers and potatoes sometimes, I think, and the potatoes are never cooked--just kind of dense wads--, it's just not appetizing. I can't or won't eat it. The other dishes are just sugar bombs. They're sweet and thick and you can feel your blood rushing through your arms after. It's a wreck. And the other things--green bean casserole (not a thing, it just isn't, it was invented to sell dried onions by the Campbell's soup company), Waldorf salad (not a salad), that sweet potato thing with marshmallows on it, all the weird shit that people's grandparents made that is not good for you and is not good--just because that's the thing they make on Christmas. It's gross and weird and we should reexamine this immediately.
Then everyone under the sun decides they should make holiday cookies. Lucky for most of us, the basic sugar cookie recipe and cookie cutters are easy to come by, but everyone does it. And then they give them to you. And they sit on the table and eventually get thrown away. My wife bangs out a good batch of these almost every year, and her recipe is good--it has enough salt. But you've got to decorate them and accumulate piles of jars of sprinkles and those inedible little silver balls. And I just don't really like sugar cookies or shortbread. I just don't. I think those are leftovers from a time when there was less imagination in baking and things like chocolate or nutmeg were scarce or expensive. We can do better. Let's also talk about the ever-growing tub of Christmas tree ornaments we have in the closet...
Christmas music is the worst. The only thing good about it is the irreverent side, such as "Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al, or "Christmas Sweater" by Brenda Weiler. All these traditional tunes belted out by crooners over the years drive me nuts. Rufus Wainwright's version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" is fun because he sounds totally sloshed, but the song is ultimately about date rape, right?
We do watch holiday movies, but I draw the line when it comes to "It's a Wonderful Life" or "The Santa Clause" or some shit. We watch Gremlins, Krampus, Elf, and we're probably adding Die Hard next year. I just don't care for the movies created by algorithm. I don't even like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation--it's so trite. I don't need to watch movies to feel good about spending time with my family or wanting to give gifts. I don't get life lessons from people talking to ghosts about how much of a shit they used to be.
And last--and I'm running out of steam here--I kind of hate the crazed "MERRY CHRISTMAS" that strangers shout at me when I'm looking for an end table at IKEA. I'm pretty sure you're not Christian, either, tiny Indian woman who works at IKEA, so don't pander to me.
Back to my Bailey's & coffee and traditional cinnamon roll breakfast.
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