Bah! Humbug!

I usually love Christmas. I get all excited about the twinkle lights and wreaths and tinsel and the Christmas music on the radio (even if it is the same damn 12 songs repeated again and again). I feel the urge to bake and decorate cookies and pour some rum into my egg nog to make it less nasty. I am all about network reruns of holiday specials.

But lately I've been feeling less than festive. Crowds of shoppers make me homicidal, the very thought of holiday traffic makes my blood boil, and I want to steal that annoying bell from the money-collecting Santa and beat him about the face with it. I feel as if all the "cheer" and "magic" of Christmas has worn away, leaving visible the underlying artifice and consumerism of the whole holiday season. It doesn't help that the "season" starts earlier every year, giving more people more time to spend more money on more crap they don't need. (I'm anticipating a post-Independence Day Christmas sale next year.) I am overwhelmed by the Christmas Guessing Game, in which contestants must figure out who will be giving them gifts (and how much those gifts will have cost) so that they can reciprocate the gift-giving to avoid looking like a selfish asshole.

I also recently obtained four more siblings (through my dad's marriage), whom I adore, don't get me wrong, but for whom I must now also shop. I don't know what to get for them, and even if I did, I probably couldn't afford to get it. I live in a lovely house in a lovely neighborhood in a lovely part of DC, which means that I have no lovely money left after I pay for my rent, my increasingly expensive utilities bill (NINETY bucks this month, gawddamnit!), and food for me and my cat.

So my family will (my Visa card willing) get presents this year, along with my best friend (who may as well be my sister) and my girlfriend (anyone who can put up with me to the extent that she does deserves a gift!). Everyone else might get cards, if I have time and/or remember to make them. And I'm tempted to leave a flaming bag of cat shit on my mom's front porch... perhaps with a nice Christmas bow on it. And a big old ham and a bottle of wine for my Algerian stepfather who called me fat.