Go write a poem about it, Scrooge

Six things that make this time of year absolutely nauseating

Family Gatherings Aranda Adams
Obligatory Cheerfulness Aranda Adams
Malls Aranda Adams
The Present of the Year Aranda Adams
Crappy Wrappers Aranda Adams
Obnoxious Decorators Aranda Adams

Candy canes are gross, carolers are annoying and reindeer are best cooked medium rare.

It’s time we stop pretending to be so excited about the holidays and recognize all of the less joyous aspects that the Christmas-loving crowd neglects to notice in their eggnog induced state of holiday cheer.

Family Gatherings

Being surrounded by all of the people who share the same genetic material makes people crazy. We spend all year separated off in our own corners of the world and then, cruelly, Christmas forces the entire family to congregate around a turkey and pretend to know and like each other. In order to make this torturous event a little more bearable, I suggest playing a drinking game. Drink any time a family member does the following: asks an overly personal question about your love life, tells you an anecdote unrelated to the actual conversation, or gossips with you about another relative.

Obligatory Cheerfulness

Holidays require cheerfulness and a happy, pleasant attitude. This obligation to shit rainbows while I bake cookies and sing about reindeer drinking eggnog makes me want to chase children with a roll of wrapping paper yelling, “Santa isn’t real because I killed him!” Feeling obligated to act happy pisses me off for the same reason that when someone says “Don’t look” the natural reaction is to look. “Be happy, it’s Christmas”? If I want to go through my day in a melodramatic stupor, muttering swears and death threats under my breath, then I have the right to do so regardless of Jesus’ birthday or Hanukkah or whatever politically correct holiday is being celebrated that day. 

Malls

Walking into a shopping mall around Christmas is like entering a parallel universe where everything that is supposed to be delightful is exploited and degraded to the point where your soul dies a little more with every step toward the food court. Celebrities remix carols over the fuzzy intercom while manic shoppers in ugly Santa sweaters get sucked into the festive vortex of advertising schemes and a pressing obligation to buy gifts that will remain in their cellophane for all eternity. Children scream in the background. This is not a happy place. It is here, under the fluorescent lights, where the obligatory cheerfulness of the supposed Christmas-loving population can be scrutinized thoroughly from behind the fake plants and exposed as a sham.

The Present of the Year

Christmas brings out the savage, animalistic side of parents. Once advertisers decide which toy will be the most popular gift item of the year, parents flock to the mall, enter the parallel universe and transform from reasonable human beings into ferocious machines who will stop at nothing to obtain Furby or Tickle-Me Elmo or Feminist Barbie – whatever toy symbolizes love and good parenting for that year. Those who no longer receive toys can still use the fact that their parents never got them a Tamagotchi as a guilt trip to make them write a bigger cheque this year. 

Crappy Wrappers

Wrapping a present is a simple task. You do not need to use an entire roll of wrapping paper (way to kill the planet, asshole), and then stick on 34 pieces of tape in random places. This can’t even be considered gift-wrapping. It’s more like performing bondage acts on your mom’s new Crock-Pot. These crappy wrappers must be some strange breed of sadomasochist – first they punish themselves by wrapping the gift in the most complicated way possible, and then they torture the gift’s recipient with the treacherous task of unwrapping the bitch. Apparently these geniuses must be introduced to two amazing and futuristic inventions: the box and the gift bag. 

Obnoxious Decorators

If your house induces epileptic seizures, maybe you should cut down on the decorations. There’s always at least one house in every neighbourhood that puts up so many tacky decorations and lights that it ends up looking like Lite Brite and Santa Claus had a baby, and the baby threw up all over their house. How do these people sleep at night? What the hell is their hydro bill? How do they decide between icicle or twinkly lights? There is only one possible reason for creating such a distracting obstacle course to the front door that will keep people out by overloading their aesthetic capacity: these people must be building nuclear holiday weapons.

Published in Volume 65, Number 14 of The Uniter (December 2, 2010)

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