The Post X-Mas Reaction

First off, Happy New Year to everyone. 2006 provided "Everything is A-OK" with 35 posts-worth of idiocy, retardation and anger and, although i'm no psychic, i have a feeling that 2007 won't disappoint. I get this sneaking suspicion that every year from here on out will be ripe with possibilities for cynical commentary and personally i can't wait for a democrat (possibly a black one or a woman) to be president in 2008 and not because everything will automatically become sunshine and puppy dogs. Democratic presidents have left us no shortage of comedy and embarrassment in the last few decades and i imagine this one will be no slouch, whoever it is. But alas, i digress. This particular post is a reaction the the x-mas season that we've just survived. (And no, i don't think calling it x-mas takes Christ out of it. More on this later.)

My first complaint, of course, is that it's been Christmas since Halloween. (My friend Sara gave a first-hand account about this in her blog.) The song is about 12 days of Christmas, not 47. The marketers and the retail corporations have pushed christmas earlier and earlier every year. Why? Because the earlier they get you thinking about it, the earlier you'll start shopping for it. Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) sales were down this year, want to know why? Because all the people who usually waited for that day to shop had started weeks earlier this year. And what does that do for people who are already a little bah-humbug about the whole thing in the first place? It shuts them off. At least it did for me. I had my head in the sand avoiding Christmas up until about the 22nd, when i absolutely had to start shopping or risk offending my whole family.

And by the time i got to the mall, i had already worked myself into such a bad mood about it that the only thing i could do was walk around the mall brainstorming ideas for people and didn't actually buy a single thing. On the way into the mall, i was lucky enough to find a person backing out of a space on the 2nd floor of the garage, i had about 15 cars stacked up behind me and there were about 18 coming the other way. The people coming down the garage, either leaving or looking for spots themselves, wouldn't stop passing through to let this person back out and leave. So that left me sitting there with my blinker on, traffic backing up behind me, and nervous that someone coming down would stop just long enough to let this person out before whipping their vehicle into my spot. So while i'm sitting there, waiting for the inevitable spot steal move by someone coming the other way, i wandered off into a little day dream about what i would do if my spot was taken. I pictured myself putting my parking brake on, calmly leaving my car running in the middle of traffic, while i walked over to the freshly parked car (i mentally assumed it would be a BMW or Benz), opened the car door for the person, and without hesitation, punched them in the face repeatedly. And when i snapped out of this daydream and pulled into my spot, i consciously thought that there was little doubt in my mind that i would have done just that. Normally you have a little conscience in there that reminds you not to go insane, but mine was on vacation. I honestly didn't have that little voice in there telling me not to hit someone, and it really, truly, seemed like a good idea that i wouldn't have been surprised to see myself follow through. Upon entering the mall and thinking more about that reaction, i was truly shocked at what the "holiday season" had done to me.

My other huge frustration is gift buying. See, i'm not a super thoughtful person, i admit this. I don't know my friends birthdays, i barely know my family's birthdays, and although i'm a creative person and could definitely come up with great gifts every year, i rarely put enough time or effort into it, or start early enough to pull off the "creative, thoughtful, sometimes home-made but really enjoyable gift" thing. So i end up at the mall, 3 days before x-mas with some great ideas but no way to pull them off, and instead i wander around finding gifts that are expensive and yet just good enough for the people i'm buying them for. They're not the perfect gift, but hey, they might like it right? So i find myself in Roxy or Pacific Sunwear or Steve Madden or Best Buy or Nordstrom's or LaCoste buying overpriced things and trying to place a dollar value on my relationship with the person i'm buying for. I found a really nice sweater that i though my sister would love, but i felt myself trying to accessorize it or find something else that would put me closer to the dollar limit i felt my sister was worth. And i pretty much wanted to throw up over that feeling. I also found out that my cousins were buying me gifts personally (traditionally in my family the parents get all the nieces and nephews gifts and the cousins let that suffice, instead of buying an individual gift for all 8 cousins in the family), so immediately i felt obligated to buy them something and broke into a cold sweat over which cousins would be buying me thing personally this year and if i needed to get something for them too.

Last year during x-mas, i was a salaried employee and although i wasn't making a ton, i knew i could spend almost freely on x-mas and be alright. Well this year i'm starting my own business and waiting tables which puts me in a little different tax bracket than i was in last year. So i went into it with a little different frame of mind than usual.

But the whole thing just really turned me off this year. I hated the music, i hated the crowds, i hated that feeling of obligation to buy everyone something, and to decide which friends were "worth it." So in my mind, Christmas was cancelled. I wanted nothing to do with it. And i got that feeling from a lot of my friends and my family too. It was just getting to a point that the tens of thousands of dollars we all cumulatively spent could have been put to better use. I think next year, we'll really cancel Christmas and go on a vacation or spend the money on food and wine so we all sit around a big table and enjoy it.

And it turns out that my christmas didn't end up being so bad, but the events that made it for me weren't the presents at all, but it was x-mas eve when my family came over and drank too much together and laughed and told stories and ate a delicious meal. And it was on x-mas morning when i woke up at 10 and realized that my family had grown old enough that we didn't wake up at 6 and race to the tree anymore. We all wandered into the kitchen where we sat at the table, ate ibuprofen, drank a lot of water (and maybe a bloody mary) and put the delicious casserole that my grandma had given us for x-mas in the oven and didn't start giving each other gifts until almost noon. It was that emphasis on something else, on being friends, on being family that made it for me. It had nothing to do with my gifts or the gifts i gave.

And i propose that everyone who reads this post and realizes that they felt even the slightest bit of agreement with it, that they take a new idea to their families for next year. Let's take the power out of the marketers hands, lets take the the consumerism out of it, lets let Black Friday be Completely Fucking Dead Friday, lets stop shopping, stop being frustrated, stop throwing our hard earned money away on things that people don't need, let's stop trying to place a dollar sign on our friends and family's worth. Let's do something different next year. My family has already thrown the idea out there of taking a trip somewhere together or going skydiving together, just to name a few.

I call it x-mas because it's easier to write. Some people say i'm taking the Christ out of Christmas, and i really could care less because i don't think Christmas has been about Christ in this country for a long time. So take him out, put him back in, whatever, i could care less. But what i do think we absolutely should do is take the capitalism and consumerism out of christmas for good.

Thanks for reading. See you in 2007.