Here Comes Santa Claus
Jeebus Fucking Christ in a birchbark canoe...
It begins.
I remind you, gentle reader, that it's two weeks until Halloween. And they're already starting to phase out Halloween candy on the store shelves and replace it with Christmas decorations. Remember when nobody even mentioned Christmas until after Thanksgiving? I'm now mere days away from a constant barrage of TV ads telling me that I can get all my Christmas shopping done at JC Penney, that I can only really show her that I love her by buying forty thousand dollars worth of diamonds for Christmas, that I'm a bad person if I'm not buying extravagant Christmas gifts for every single person I know, from my parents to the postman to Aloysius, my fourth cousin twelve times removed who I met once at the family reunion when I was eleven, that I need to stock up on Chex Mix and Cool Whip to make The Holidays extra-special and if I don't, I'm a thoughtless asshole who will RUIN CHRISTMAS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY right down to Cousin Aloysius, that Christmas is a special fucking time when special fucking memories are made but only in direct proportion to the amount of money I spend.
As I write this, Sarah McLachlan is on the Tonight Show singing a fucking Christmas song. It's October goddamn 18th. It's happening already, and it's only going to get worse. Two weeks from now, every store and restaurant I go into is going to be playing endless craptacular Christmas music.
I just saw another ad for The Santa Clause 3. The movie is billing itself as "the final chapter in the greatest holiday trilogy of all time!" Quick, name another holiday trilogy!
Yeah, me neither.
This ad was followed, by the way, by an ad for the "Colorado Country Christmas Gift Show, November 3-5 at the Denver Merchandise Mart." Ugh.
The sum total of all this is...well...here it is...
Here it comes...
I hate Christmas.
There's a tiny bit of me that spends the first ten months of each year dreading the last two. This piece of me knows that I'll spend those two months wanting to put a bullet through my TV screen, Elvis-style, that I'm going to be fucking bombarded by holly and mistletoe and Jessica goddamn Simpson warbling her way through "Santa, Baby" every time I step foot out of the house. This piece of me also knows that if I make even the tiniest peep of complaint about any of this, somebody will be right there to call me a Grinch or a Scrooge or something, because it's my patriotic duty as an American to luv luv luv Christmas.
You know what holiday I like? The Fourth of July. It's low-stress. It's fun and there are interesting things going on, parades and fireworks and suchlike, but there's not much advertising associated with it, there's no fucking Fourth of July carols (unless you count the Star-Spangled Banner and the works of John Phillip Sousa), and it's mostly about cheeseburgers and cold beer. What's not to love?
