So we're coming to the end of perhaps the most depressing Christmas season in my lifetime, with the bad economy and all. I hate Christmas anyway, but this year especially. Seriously, I just wish it was January... actually flash forward to April of next year so the miserable winter will be over. And put an end to this damn recession too! Kill all the greedy bastards that helped cause it! Chuck shoes at your boss when you get laid off! That'll get the point across!
Here are the Top 5 Things I Hate About Christmas... the top 5 things that make you want to commit some Holiday Harakiri:
1. TV commercials: Celebrate the birth of Jesus by buying shit you can't afford! Max out your already maxed credit cards to buy your daughter a Hannah Montana doll you'll donate to the poor next year! I especially hate those BMW commercials, where some snooty bourgeois fuck looks out the window and sees a shiny BMW/Mercedes/Lexus SUV with a big red bow around it. Why are they even advertising? For the rich 1% that the Bush Administration didn't screw over? Most people this day in age can't even afford a junky $2500 1992 Ford Taurus in the car lot on the bad side of town, let alone a car that's $35K at the cheapest.
2. Snow: We just got our first major snowstorm yesterday here in Connecticut, Five to 8 inches of cold, white, frosty goodness draped across every street, driveway, house and car, making it fun to drive in, and even more fun to shovel and clean up! And even more fun if you're a seasonal UPS driver helper getting paid slave wages to deliver QVC packages to rich housewives who live near a country club. Ho ho fucking ho!
3. Xmas Music: I hate Xmas music. HATE IT! HATE HATE HATE! Every radio station, and every place I go to blares it, and it sounds like a cow getting castrated with a chainsaw to these ears (my next list will be Top Five Worst Xmas Songs Ever). The ones I hate the most aren't even your average "Jingle Bells," "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" type crap. It's the ones that are either done over by popular artists, or when they write their own. I've worked in restauarants and retail long enough to just want to kill the motherfucker who wrote "The Little Drummer Boy." Pa-rumpumpumpump this!
4. Post-Xmas Depression/The brevity of the holiday itself (same category): People stop flooding the streets to go shopping or to travel to their Xmas destinations once Xmas is over. Even where I live now (Bridgeport, CT which has about 150,000 people) is like a ghost town on December 26th. It's depressing. Xmas is like not getting laid for 6 months, having your girlfriend tease you by wearing a short skirt and high heels promising to do you but she has a period that never ends, her finally getting off her rag, you finally getting to score, and you cum within 2 minutes of fucking her; all that excitement, and buildup for nothing. And she only lays you once a year.
5. The Shit Always Hits The Fan Before, During or Right After Xmas: Ask any family. They'll always have a great, heartwarming Xmas story about how someone lost their job right before the holiday, their parents getting in a drunken fight on Xmas, or their asshole Dad checking into rehab right after Xmas (That's me!). I don't want to rehash bad Xmas memories at the moment, but holy fucking shitballs, I've had some terrible Xmas moments that not even Bukowski or any great contemporary fiction writer can come up with.
It's only 5 days until Xmas, and I will be on an "I Hate the Holidays" tangent that will end as soon as I pack up the Xmas tree and put it back in the storage room! The sooner this holiday is over, and the sooner 2008 is over, the happier I will be. Bah Humbug!
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14 years ago
3 comments:
I'm glad we feel similarly about this! All we gotta do is get through Thursday and we're golden. It shouldn't be TOO bad. At least you don't have to cook for like 8 people!
What a totally depressing post! While I disagree on many of these points, I want to focus on a few of them:
"Especially hate those BMW commercials, where some snooty bourgeois fuck looks out the window and sees a shiny BMW/Mercedes/Lexus SUV with a big red bow around it."
This sounds awfully presumptuous. Do you really think that anyone who has planned, saved, and managed to remain successful during hard times and chosen to treat themselves or a loved one to a nice car is a "bourgeois fuck?" This makes it sound like you dislike wealth in general. Can't imagine why since the only cure for being poor is wealth. Seems like we should be studying what people who can still afford BMWs have done differently than the rest of us. (Provided they aren't corrupt of course.)
You also said:
"Why are they even advertising? For the rich 1% that the Bush Administration didn't screw over?"
Who are the "rich 1%", exactly? I dug up an article called "Who Are The Wealthiest One Percent?" that answers that question based on IRS statistics. Quoting from that article:
"How much do you have to make per year to be a One Percenter? $10 million? $5 million? $1 million? Not even close. Try $208,000-which, if you think about it, is well within reach of a lot of folks, especially dual-income professional couples who invest wisely. And I'm not talking about couples who live in Silicon Valley or Washington's Georgetown or New York's Upper East Side. An experienced lawyer or other "over 40" professional with a graduate degree in the Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth areas, for example, has a median annual income of about $115,000. So you don't have to be a millionaire to claim membership in the top 1 percent club."
Economist Thomas Sowell disproved a popular myth in his excellent article "The Top One Percent."
"Americans in the top one percent, like Americans in most income brackets, are not there permanently, despite being talked about and written about as if they are an enduring "class" -- especially by those who have overdosed on the magic formula of "race, class and gender," which has replaced thought in many intellectual circles.
At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient at that level. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005."
It's also worth noting that the top 1% we all like to demonize pay by far the most taxes - something like 40% of taxes, if I remember correctly. Also, how did Bush "screw over" other people by giving rich people tax cuts? Tax cuts are simply allowing people to keep more of the money they earn. That sounds like justice to me. Everyone should have more tax cuts. Indeed, everyone did get tax cuts under Bush. The problem wasn't that we got tax cuts, it's that Bush kept spending money anyway.
(But that's more a reflection on the standard deceit of the politician class in general than anything unique to Bush. All politicians try to be everything to everybody.)
But anyway, back to the point...
I can't see how anyone could hate Christmas. I've always seen Christmas as a time to relax, reflect on the year that's about to end, and spend time with people you love. What could be wrong with that?
Are there some annoying ads? Yes, but there are annoying ads year-round. Is the Christmas music they constantly play in stores a little cheesy? Sure. But these things aren't really the essence of Christmas and they don't make it one bit less fun for me.
Think back to a Christmas that you enjoyed (I'm sure there were at least a few!) What did you like about them? Whatever it was, I bet the annoying ads and Christmas music didn't make it any less fun for you.
Try to focus on the positive things instead of the negative!
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