Closing the Door on Oppressive Traditions

So, you might remember in this post and this post I talked about finally doing what I should have done eons ago and forging new traditions for the holiday season. Those posts were really only the beginning of what I had in mind.

If I had my way, I wouldn’t celebrate the Christmas season at all. At least not past the Midwinter feast. Above and beyond that, I just wouldn’t shed one tear if the holiday season stopped coming, frankly.

I hate Christmas and have for many, many years. Far longer than my kids have even been alive. This is part of the reason that I just have never done it the same way as most Americans do it and why I’m finally closing the door on the societal obligatory traditions that make this stupid holiday so oppressive to me.

Let me list the reason I don’t like Christmas. We can never have too much talk about why I hate it, it makes me feel better.

Christmas is a wasteful holiday.

It never fails, I can never take my trash out to the dumpster for 7 days after Christmas because the dumpster is so cram-packed with boxes and Christmas wrapping. The amount of garbage that Americans generate during the holiday season is puke inducing. If people really took into account how wasteful it really was, I think we could have a better season altogether. But, Americans are about commercialism and consumption. We are not about the real reasons we should be celebrating. Family fellowship and love.

I stopped giving Christmas cards several years ago. This year, I went ahead and sent some. The story behind why is long, painful and very stressful. But, I felt bad for even sending a paper card. I know where those cards end up and I just contributed to it.

The food waste is also insane. In Britain, they throw away something like 2 million Christmas turkeys, 5 million Christmas puddings and 74 million mince pies. It’s not hard to see how considering all 3 of those things are nauseating and I can’t understand why anyone would eat them. The amount of wasted food that Americans are responsible for would double or even triple Britain’s numbers. But, why??? Why do we insist on such elaborate spreads when no one is going to eat the leftovers???

I have decided to have smaller feasts. We had ham and steak this year and we did just fine. We had some leftovers, but they are already gone today.

Christmas is encroaching on all other seasons.

Our stores start to roll out the Christmas crap in September, now. Obviously, this is something that won’t go away until everyone makes the decision to kill the beast that Christmas has become in the last 30 years.

We started hearing Christmas music two weeks before Thanksgiving. So, I decided to fight back and started wearing my iPod and headphones into the stores. This is great for escaping the mind numbing robotics of today’s Christmas. Up until about Thanksgiving day, it’s almost possible to forget that you’re even shopping during the “Christmas season”.

I have found that the Christmas spread is another reason that my hatred for the holiday has blossomed into a full blown loathing. You can’t enjoy Thanksgiving or even Halloween anymore without the foul stench of Santa’s farts wafting in your direction.

Black Friday ruins any chances Christmas ever had to win me.

I don’t take part in it. I just despise the American populace during Black Friday. It shows what a depraved society we’ve become.

Holiday shopping suck, period.

The disgusting amounts of personal debt that people take on during this season, the pressure to find the “perfect gift”, the pressure to buy something “from the heart” even though it’s probably not anything that person wants, needs or will use. Cheap items all “made in China” by some poor people in a sweat shop.

All reason to despise Christmas.

Christmas takes a toll on ones mental sanity.

Whether it’s because of the pressure to accrue obscene amounts of personal debt every year or the stress of having to deal with your despicable extended families and in laws, mental health takes a header into the toilet during the holidays.

There is nothing relaxing about today’s American Christmas.

The white trash decoration bonanza.

I went around to take pictures of some of the tacky decorations in my area. Part of the reason I despise Christmas is because we Americans believe we need to wear the entire holiday like a sweater. I don’t know any other society that is willing to trash up their yards every year with tacky blow up globes and snowmen (all that lay deflated in the yard during the day, I might add and make the yard look like the white trash special at the local K-Mart).

 

Some people might think that one is rather mild. But, I assure you, it looks much worse in person. I have always despised it when people suspend lights from their leaf-bare trees because it looks fucking creepy as hell. It looks trashy during the day, too. No Christmas decor on the outside of homes looks good in the daylight. It all looks very cheap and awkward.

 

 

One of our more egregious examples of trashy Southern redneck Christmas. You really should see this one in person, and better yet, in the light.

I discovered a new one this year, though. When I was taking pictures of another house, I saw this monstrosity. I’m pretty sure you could see this one from the ISS.

 

 

That thing literally glows and lights up the entire block in a blue haze. Thousands of neon blue LED lights and a large, trashy blow up Santa in the yard. I don’t know if you can see it in the second pic, on the very right in the window, that’s their Christmas tree in that window. Lit up with hundreds of neon RED LED lights.

I hate to admit it, but that one actually appeals to two sides of me. The side that goes, “WTF IS THAT?!”, and the one that cackles like a mad woman at the insanity of something like this.

The bottom line is, my kids and my husband and I figured it out while we were sitting around here yesterday, in our sweats. Nowhere to go, no one coming around. Our dinner went off smashingly on December 24th. And, Christmas Day was spent the way I have wanted to spend it for the last 30 some years. Relaxing.

It was time to say good bye to Christmas. For good. We all despise it, anyway.

Oh, we’ll still observe Wintermass, I’ll still use the time to re-up the kids on socks and underwear and we will all get the things we eye during the year. But, we made a decision yesterday never to celebrate American Christmas again. Instead, we’ll be celebrating it much the way the Finns do. On Christmas Eve. The rest of the holiday will be our winter break. From work, from school, from everyone else.

I took the tree down today. That was the last time I’ll be using the traditional tree, and, I’m getting rid of it tomorrow. Clutter out.

The secret to a relaxing holiday season is to completely ignore it and make your own.