Deck the halls
While looking for a rubber mask to halfheartedly wear for Halloween this year, I couldn’t help but get distracted by the angelic hymns of the Christmas season. WTF? The corpse of Halloween was still warm and the capitalists had already started piping in Christmas songs!
Christmas and I have always had a very turbulent relationship. It started when I started finding cash in my Christmas stocking at age six. Since then my Christmas gifts from my parents always came in the same envelope that they used for official letters and death threats. (For me. Kidding.) Every year the secretary would type in the greeting to be signed by my dad.
I won’t complain about the cash, because cash is good. However, the spirit was lost in the formalities of my father’s rather clinical approach to the holidays. When I opened the envelope, I always felt I was getting a 13th-month bonus. Then a few years ago when I finally moved out of my ancestral home, I started creating my own tradition.
I bought my first tree. Granted, it was perhaps as tall as an Olsen Twin to accommodate my tiny apartment; still, I was thrilled that it was all mine. I bought fancy tree décor in Firma and wove poinsettias all over my living room, bedroom and even bath! Marcel and I would drink hot chocolate every evening while watching TV and I would dress up listening to Christmas songs. My home looked like Christmas vomited all over it because of the overload.
I rediscovered Christmas. I kept presents wrapped and sealed till the day itself, taking time each day guessing what was inside. Christmas shopping was a science in itself. Marcel and I drafted our list, as early as September and by November all gifts were sealed, packed and ready to be delivered. Our gifts were always the first in everyone’s trees.
The highlight of every holiday season for us was making our signature Christmas cards. One year it was the Olsen Christmas tree festooned with delicate Victorian-inspired ornaments; the following year was a photo of our beloved Bruno the
This year it’s different. I hate Christmas mourn. I’m now Marcel-less, which makes the whole Christmas card and Christmas tree ritual sad. My grand list of almost 200 people has been whittled down to an anorexic 25.
Talk about editing. I still have to pack those bombs to be delivered, I just can’t find it in me to get all excited. This year my color theme is black, to commemorate Christmas coma. So to those 25: Please don’t freak out when you receive a package wrapped in black, it’s not a dead cat from your stalker or frenemy.
Christmas is the real mercury retrograde. Christmas inspires the fatal decision to reunite errant lovers and put tubes all around ailing relationships. It extends olive branches to frenemies best left on a different side of the fence.
Jailbait eye candy! But of course, I may go to jail trying to chat them up, not to mention buying them a drink! I have never really spent Christmas itself here in
All this sentimental spirit makes people totally mental. Not to mention fat.
I actually was having lunch with a friend who was unhappy in her relationship for quite some time, given her boyfriend’s roving eye. I told her to leave and at least have a Xanax-free Christmas. She just replied, “I can’t, it’s Christmas. Maybe after. He might give me a good ‘guilt’ gift for Christmas — you never know!”
I had to ask myself why I was friends with this loser.
But there are still the good parts. The season still manages to bring out the best in people: giving to charity and doing things they would normally never do outside the context of the holidays. There may be a scam or two involved, but all in all it’s nice that people still have the real Christmas spirit in them. Although it would be nice if this could be a year-long affair.
I hate that I’m being such a bitch about the holiday season. I’m just a stranger with some seriously sour candy. Maybe when the boarding school cuties start coming in. I just may change the color of my Christmas wrapper. I’m that shallow. Seriously.
