Stupid Christmas

As you all know, I find the whole concept of Christmas to be fairly stupid, however there are parts of the tradition that are clearly worse and that I personally dread more than others:

The Office Holiday Potluck

I've written a great deal of my dislike for the office holiday potluck in the past (so I won't go into great detail), but suffice it to say, my opinion hasn't changed any. Some may enjoy spending time with people they normally don't socialize with in an uncomfortable silence (or worse, talking about their Christmas shopping), but that certainly isn't me.

In all the years that I've attended these things, no one ever talks about anything other than Christmas related subjects. Just once, I'd like to sit down and have a meaningful discussion, say, about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and it's legacy in the region today.

Probably explains why I'm not a lot of fun at parties.

Boxing Day Sales

You didn't get what you wanted on Christmas Day (it's apparently not the thought that counts, but the in-store credit), so lets waste one of the few days you have off this year frustrated and angry:

• Narrowly avoiding wrecking your car while fighting for a parking spot.
• Freezing your arse off for four hours in a queue waiting to get into the shops while getting increasingly irate over all the people cutting in line. 
• Fighting strangers over the last "must have" item on the shelf. 
• Queuing up again to dispose of the cash you probably don't have on an item that's still bloody expensive even at 50% off. 
• Returning to your vehicle to find that some bugger has scrapped the side of your car off when they tried to squeeze their giant SUV (crooked of course) into the space next to you.
• Fighting your way through traffic for an hour, narrowly avoiding accidents while passing numerous accidents. 
• And if you're really lucky, when you're at home eagerly opening your newly purchased item, you discover it's been crushed during one of the above mentioned incidents. 

Thanks very much but I think I can resist the savings and residual holiday spirit.

Black Friday

All the aggravation of the above Boxing Day Sales, but more likely to result in a lawsuit, jail time or shooting/stabbing death (particularly if you live in the United States).

What little shopping I do (which is purely for people under the age of 15), I do before the end of November. I don't care terribly about saving 25 to 50 percent off the price tag, I'm more interested in the happy young faces on Christmas morning*.

The Traditional Christmas Visits

I know when I was a kid, I enjoyed nothing more than to drop all my new toys to be bundled up and hauled away to relatives homes to be berated with questions regarding my behavior in the past year before receiving socks and underwear from them. Why would you want to stay in your warm home with your new Rebel Snowspeeder when you could be feigning pleasure in receiving a package of brown tube socks?

I'm still a terrible liar.

I find that as I get older, I seem to hang onto those things that I enjoyed most when I was seven. So unless there's Lego and Star Wars toys at the end of the journey (they don't necessarily need to be for me, just available) I'm even less inclined to travel over the winter holidays than I was three decades ago.

Christmas Cards

A Christmas card is something you give someone for generally one of the following reasons:

• You don't care enough about them to spend money on a gift, but feel guilty enough to send some sort of acknowledgement of their existence. 
• You sent Christmas Cards before the advent of modern social media, and continue to do so because it's "tradition". 
• You send cards to people who live far away, and it's your yearly "this is what's going on with us" update, traditionally informing people how many of your family have died due to tuberculosis and scarlet fever in the past year (it's an old tradition). 

Social media and modern medicine these days have made the yearly update that was the Christmas card, pointless and redundant (although the postal services and Hallmark would have you believe otherwise). 

I myself still send out a half dozen cards, but mostly for laughs. I've recently come across a shop that sells the most seasonally disrespectful cards that money can buy. I honestly don't know how people could afford to send out more though... it cost me $30.00 last year to post six and it seriously has me considering other alternatives. 

Gift Giving

I've discovered that by the time you're an adult, you pretty much have everything you could possibly want (or afford), so gifts tend to be things you don't especially want or need. Of course, if you happen to be friends with a billionaire, you can always leave a few hints for that aircraft carrier you've had your eye on**.

That said, its much more fun to purchase gifts for people under the age of six. Beside's, they may invite you to play with the toys too and that always makes for a fun Christmas morning, particularly if you remember to bring an assortment of batteries.

Save your money, or donate some toys to needy children. 

Secret Santa

Secret Santa has to be one of the stupidest Christmas concepts and one of my least favourite Christmas traditions.

I can still remember some of my own early disastrous exposures to this daft exercise.

I think grade three was the first year I was introduced to it. The entire class was pretty excited about it. We had a a whopping five dollar budget cap (which is to say our parents had a five dollar budget cap).

On the last day of school before the Christmas holidays, we all eagerly exchanged gifts.... and promptly began trying to trade each other for the three "cool" presents in the class, myself included. Three kids had received the new HotWheels Crack-Ups (cars that had a revolving panel that can simulate a dent).

I still think they're pretty darned cool.

Of course, it wasn't that I'd received a bad gift (it was pretty cool in it's own right... it was a Corgi Jaguar E4.2), but it's hard to compete with the yearly hot ticket Christmas item. I still feel pretty bad about trying to trade it with the kid that had bought it for me in the first place.***

Needless to say, twenty-seven kids went home that afternoon severely disappointed.

Thankfully, the school did away with the practice after the following year, and it wasn't until more recently that I've encountered it again.

The office Secret Santa is a practice that's bad enough for children to endure, let alone adults and from what I've experience and observed, it's an exercise in frustration, futility and bad feelings (and you'd think adults would know better).  Each giver is often pressured into participating, and forced to spend time and money at a time of year that they have already enough to deal with. And with the drawing of names, you end up with someone you've talked to twice in the last five years, purchasing some useless generic item that will in six months time, end up in the trash, or in the donation bin.

Most people aren't all that observant anyway with the people they work around  and don't pay too much attention to each others "likes"... the few times I've been conscripted into this process more recently, I've ended up with golf balls, or other small sporting items. Can you imagine anything more absurd? For the past 15 years of my working life, I've had a Star Trek calendar and a Tie Fighter at my desk and anyway, I think it should be pretty clear to most people by now that I don't observe or participate in sports.

Purveyors of this nonsense, if you really want to spread the spirit of holiday cheer, put the proceeds to a donation to the local humane society or a children's benefit.

***

Well, that about wraps it up for this years Holiday rant. A "humbug" to you all and I leave you with this demented cartoon:

 *Apparently I can be a big softie. 
**If any of you are secretly billionaires, hint, hint! I could also use an F-14 fighter wing for said aircraft carrier. 
***For the record, it was (eventually) appreciated after all. As you can see in the image below, I still have it after thirty-odd years! 

A couple of scratches, but otherwise in mint condition