‘Tis the Season
(to be medicated)

If you have been Fa La La ing and having yourself a “merry little Christmas” you may want to close the browser now because when the Christmas cheer was being passed out, I must have been standing behind the door. This year I neglected to get the required dose and if you continue to read this you may end up with the feeling that someone has peed in your eggnog.

The fact is that I have never been overly exuberant about the winter holidays and this year was certainly no exception. Don’t get me wrong, I faked it like a hooker on a Saturday night. I pasted on a phony smile, mustered up the energy to position the required decorations and wore ear plugs to muffle those depressing, asinine seasonal tunes that are forced upon me from every form of media on the planet. I prepared foods, smiled when I spoke to people on the phone (someone told me that if you smile while talking it improves your tone) and invited folks in to eat drink and be merry while I was struggling to keep from climbing onto the roof and tying one end of a rope to the chimney, the other around my neck and sailing off the edge like Tinkerbell on a windy night.

Do I have you feeling all bah hum-buggy yet and asking yourself why, if I feel this way do I even bother? That’s a question I ask myself every year and every year I fail to find an answer. Maybe I do it because the cynical adult I have become still holds hope of finding the excitement and magic from the Christmases of my youth (whether real or just in my imagination). Or perhaps I’m just a masochist who enjoys working my ass off because I know it will not be appreciated and I can revel in the knowledge I was right. Or maybe I just do it out of guilt but every year I say to myself, “Self, you won’t do this next year” and when the next year rolls around there I am doing it all over again and if I live I’ll probably do it again next year.

However I might just decide to follow the trail that my mother blazed this year. OMG! I can't believe I just wrote that but... She declared the day after Thanksgiving that there would be no Christmas celebration at her house this year. Only my mother would think that she is powerful enough to cancel Christmas but within her kingdom she declared to everyone within hearing distance, "There will be no tree, no decorations, no food and no gifts for anyone" and by damn she stuck to her guns. By 7 PM on Christmas eve she was hammered and declaring how liberated she felt and by 8:30 she was sound asleep. She didn’t have to suffer the clearing and cleaning of dishes, or pick up trashed ribbons and bows and she will not spend a dreaded and often postponed 3 days of taking down decorations and packing them away. The only thing she may suffer from is a slight hang-over. She may have the right idea after all. It may be that next year I will proclaim myself Queen Grinch of the Universe, cancel Christmas and just tie one on.