What does Christmas mean to you? Don't you dare answer with some phony-baloney sentimental s- you don't believe but feel obligated to mutter year after year.
Gimme some feeling! What does this annual holiday mean to you? Pull aside the curtain and let me in oh wondrous Wizard of Oz because I know you ain't no wizard, you're a man baby, a man!
Maybe as a Holy Roller your holiday revolves around gratitude for the birth of your Savior, the Son of the Lord, which is the reason for the season! Am I right or am I right? Amen! As a warrior for the Lord, you work to keep Christ in Christmas. You look forward to celebrating the occasion at church, with family and friends, maybe taking part in a live manger scene (I'll be the donkey!) or volunteering to help the less fortunate.
Well ... it depends on what type of Christian you are because there are two:
Type One: Believe loving God and loving your neighbor is the whole enchilada, you are nice to all things great and small, help people when possible (i.e. fork over dough at Christmastime so less fortunate kiddies can have gifts, donate food, volunteer at nursing homes where so many elderly are alone during the holidays -- all because you want to, not because you feel obligated). You're a giver. Sounds all warm and fuzzy, right?
Well (cue suspenseful music!) ... then there's Type Two: Oh ye Holy Roller of Holy Rollers, you hide behind the belief you're a soldier for Jesus and must spread His word like a fungus and look down upon those who disagree. You judge, spread hate, tell everybody how to act, what to say, what to believe ... before retiring home to beat your spouse with the back of your hand like the pimp you are then dialing up that nasty lil' hottie you freak on the side. If you repent it's OK because she makes you feel like a real man, doesn't she? Because you are a real man! A big man!
You're a mean one Mr. Grinch ...
With this mix of people populating Mother Earth, no wonder Jesus' birth and goodwill towards men were replaced with a season of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales (complete with a shot of pepper spray to the face!), shopping malls filled to compacity with rude and stressed out morons hungry for deals, a fat omnipresent dude in a suit who is helped by tiny men and flying creatures of the night, and don't forget the gimme-gimme-gimme-gimme-gimme snot-nosed kids.
Adults are just as guilty, making it easier for friends and family alike and registering for Christmas gifts -- I ain't lyin! These bratty adults want expensive gifts no one can afford because, let's face it folks, people go further into debt around the holidays! It's like a diet. Give a dieter an excuse and they'll snatch it right out of your hand.
"Oh, I was doing real good on my diet. Real good! But then ... Sally in HR brought leftover cookies and birthday cake to work. That bitch. I can't turn down free food! It was stale but I couldn't resist. And then I went to this Christmas party and it was open bar and hors d'oeuvres. I mean, come on! It would've been rude to not eat anything or drink those five glasses of egg nog."
"Yeah, I'm having money issues but it's the holidays! Next year I'll turn it around and tighten the almighty belt! Until then, iPads for everybody! Hooray! Do you love me now?"
Yeah, right.
So ... maybe Christmas isn't about Jesus to you because, frankly, you don't believe in the dude. He was just a man! Maybe your Christmas is filled with fondness more than meaning.
The feeling you get when watching "A Christmas Story" for the hundredth time and basking in the glow of electric sex gleaming in the window and poor Ralphie going blind from *gasp* soap poisoning! Maybe it's the taste of an annual holiday dish -- or excitement knowing it will magically appear for your gluttonous pleasure! It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!
Every Christmas morning my sweet mama made homemade stratta -- a large breakfast casserole with bread, eggs, cheese, sausage, hashbrowns, etc. We waited with muted hatred to open presents until mean-old-granny carted her fat ass over, a woman who couldn't have cared less watching us open presents but made us wait just the same, year after year, even if we woke up, as children often do, at the hairy butt-crack of dawn. My mom made it bearable when the smell of that cheesy, meaty goodness hit our little noses. Mmm mmm good!
Yeah, my granny isn't the I-baked-you-some-cookies-filled-with-love-and-made-cocoa kind. She was the I-ran-out-of-Pall-Malls-and-Jim-Beam-cough-cough-cough ... and that's all you hear before she passes out with a lit cigarette dangling dangerously from her dry, lipstick smeared dry lips. You go to open your apathetically wrapped present from her and find she'd gifted an old hair dryer and gray-hair filled comb from 1968. But that's the holidays! Forced time with family members you love or love to hate and hate to love -- annoying siblings who make it all about them, grannys who literally suck the life out of the room with each drag of their unfiltered cigarette.
"What's that grandma? Am I hungry? Oh no, no thank you. I seem to have lost my appetite."
Anyway, you are fond of tradition. The stockings filled with sweet goodies and probably some damn fruit placed by a well-meaning adult (I don't want no stinkin' oranges!), homemade cookies and delights, the Christmas tree decorated with lights (hopefully in full working order), old ornaments dusted off year after year, broken or not, maybe a string of popcorn you half assed and ate half of ... all the Christmas shit you keep tucked away during the year so you can fill your house with Santas, elves, Christmas plates, nutless nutcrackers, nativity scenes ... You love the consistency of it all, knowing what to except. Well ... that's if there was consistency to your holidays. Maybe the one constant was it always sucked ass or you didn't know what or who to expect.
Maybe you're more into the glitz and glam of Christmas. New outfits for Christmas parties -- hopefully not the dreaded Christmas sweater -- where you get ripped out of your mind off spiked egg nog and jello shooters. Instead of enjoying gift giving to merely see delight on the faces of your friends and family as they rip open the wrapping paper and receive just what they wanted, your excitement lies in the attainment of free shit. You are preoccupied with worry, knowing all your presents will be exactly what you didn't want, obviously picked with no regard, at the last minute or with no significant amount of money spent. For shame! How dare they!
Bah humbug!
Maybe Christmas isn't a good time for you. Maybe it's full of sorrow because your family never had enough money to have the Christmas everyone always wanted. Full of guilt and regret, which poisons the experience. Maybe something bad happened around the holidays in years past or someone you once enjoyed this special occasion with is no longer in the picture ... passed on or moved on. Your joy is tainted with images of what was or should have been.
I wish I could feel something dramatic about Christmas, to be filled with the joy of the holiday, the quintessential Christmas Spirit as the holiday movies and TV commercials suggest. The season of giving, ya know? Filled like a jelly f-ing doughnut!
Interesting that Christmas, a season about giving, gratitude and togetherness, comes at the end of the year, a time when people take stock of the past 12 months and whether or not they were naughty or nice, literally. Santa ain't checking the list, the Lord is and He's pissed!
Christmas comes with too much expectation, too much baggage. We need to slow our roll and chill out, feel what we're feeling, good or bad, happy or sad. Don't try to feel joyous because you're supposed to around this time of year. Feel however you feel and then find out why and work to change! Stop procrastinating -- like shopping or baking -- and get 'er done within your budget so you can enjoy being with family, even the bitches on the tree who suck because they aren't all terrible, there are a few good ones in the mix ... hopefully. Make the best of it because it's your life you're wasting! Time is what life is made of!
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