Christmas! What's Not to Love?
I love Christmas. It is my most favourite holiday of the year, and as someone who gets really enthusiastic about the holidays, that's really saying something. I get genuine joy out of finding a gift I know someone will love and being able to give it to them. And don't get me started on wrapping presents. Wrapping presents is like my heroin. I love it. I wrap the gifts that everyone in my family has bought, except for those that are for me. It's my favourite part.
But being the bitter person I am, there are things I don't like about Christmas. For example:
1. People who don't know the words to Christmas carols, so they just mumble along to the general tune. Fabulous.
2. Christmas newsletter type cards. Nothing says "I don't really care" like a mass produced, printed out holiday letter on Walmart stationery. My favourite. Even better, when they have pictures of their dogs or cats, and refer to them by name. I love animals, but they aren't people, and they shouldn't get treated as such. I kid you not, almost half of the annual Christmas update of a (distant) relative was related to Scruffy's recent surgery.
3. Egg nog. Oh god. This is horrendous.As nostalgic as you'd like to be, eggnog is disgusting. To me, it's like drinking melted butter. Ew. For the record, I hate fruitcake too, as well as plum pudding.
4. Martha Stewart-esque Christmas. I figured that I'd end with this, because it is the thing that I loathe the most. One year, my family and I did a house tour a week before Christmas. We decked the house out in the most fabulous, tasteful decorations we could find, and it looked beautiful, like it was straight out of a magazine. We all hated every minute of it. My family is not one for ceremony. Traditionally on Christmas, we get up at five, open our stockings, then our presents, then we all go back to bed and sleep until about two in the afternoon. Then we make a frozen pizza in the toaster oven. After all that, we watch It's a Wonderful Life and cry. It's great. I love it that way. Our tree isn't very pretty, but it's covered in ornaments that I remember making in Kindergarten. There's no expectation for a wonderful Christmas. There's just "the usual", and I wouldn't trade anything in the world for it. No family dinner, no special Christmas outfits, nothing.
Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a great holiday, no matter what kind of winter-time celebrations you're into.
But being the bitter person I am, there are things I don't like about Christmas. For example:
1. People who don't know the words to Christmas carols, so they just mumble along to the general tune. Fabulous.
2. Christmas newsletter type cards. Nothing says "I don't really care" like a mass produced, printed out holiday letter on Walmart stationery. My favourite. Even better, when they have pictures of their dogs or cats, and refer to them by name. I love animals, but they aren't people, and they shouldn't get treated as such. I kid you not, almost half of the annual Christmas update of a (distant) relative was related to Scruffy's recent surgery.
3. Egg nog. Oh god. This is horrendous.As nostalgic as you'd like to be, eggnog is disgusting. To me, it's like drinking melted butter. Ew. For the record, I hate fruitcake too, as well as plum pudding.
4. Martha Stewart-esque Christmas. I figured that I'd end with this, because it is the thing that I loathe the most. One year, my family and I did a house tour a week before Christmas. We decked the house out in the most fabulous, tasteful decorations we could find, and it looked beautiful, like it was straight out of a magazine. We all hated every minute of it. My family is not one for ceremony. Traditionally on Christmas, we get up at five, open our stockings, then our presents, then we all go back to bed and sleep until about two in the afternoon. Then we make a frozen pizza in the toaster oven. After all that, we watch It's a Wonderful Life and cry. It's great. I love it that way. Our tree isn't very pretty, but it's covered in ornaments that I remember making in Kindergarten. There's no expectation for a wonderful Christmas. There's just "the usual", and I wouldn't trade anything in the world for it. No family dinner, no special Christmas outfits, nothing.
Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a great holiday, no matter what kind of winter-time celebrations you're into.