Christmas is for kids, so shut up already!

I am the quintessential curmudgeon. I believe that christmas gifts should be for kids. I believe that the whole materialistic bullshit of the season should be saved for the under 12 crowd.

After that, you need to learn a hard lesson...winter is long, life is hard, and I'm sick and damn tired of trying to make the magic.

As I've stated before, I am SOOOOO lucky. My kids don't really ask for anything for christmas, and getting gift ideas from them can be rather difficult so when they do throw me a bone that is reasonable, I tend to go with it.

Even when that means sitting side by side with child and going through her cart on Amazon and getting her feedback as I order her items for her stockings.

"There will be no surprises this christmas, will there?" was her question.

Not unless your gifts don't get here on time...

My best friend's dad while I was growing up was also a curmudgeon and I didn't understand why when I was a kid. He dispised the holidays.

With age comes understanding.

Aside from the rampant materialism, I hate the idea that I am expected to go along with the lemmings and do what everyone else is doing. I also hate the idea that because the holidays place an expectation of happiness on everyone, that people who are alone or poor or just on the outer fringes of society are even more marginalized.

I used to become physically sick on Christmas eve because I was told that Santa wasn't going to come if I was bad. Now, I wasn't a bad kid by any means but I got a third and fourth helping of the guilt gene when I was in utero and boy oh boy, I would be up all night long sick as a dog becuase I knew that I wasn't good enough for santa and every single bad thought that I had during the year was going to come back to haunt me. Believe it or not, I was not raised Catholic (or Jewish).

I look back at that and aside from wondering what a totally fucked up kid I was, I really have to protest against the idea of holding santa over a kid's head. Especially a kid as obviously neurotic as I was.

So, over the past two or three years, I have totally taken my hands off the whole Christmas thing. I don't do cookies or a tree, I purchase gifts for my kids with a seething undercurrent of annoyance, and if anyone asks me what I want for Christmas, I am quickly approaching the response of "I want you to leave me the fuck alone, that's what I want for Christmas".

Go ahead. Have Christmas. Do whatever the fuck you want to do. Max out your credit cards and convince yourself that you're happy. Just leave me the fuck alone.

And have a happy holiday!