Christmas time is stressful. I have to come up with various lists of things to buy everyone and somehow hope that everyone likes what you got them.
There's nothing that will take the wind out of your sails like finding the gifts you got people still in the gift bag. So you didn't even consider enjoying the gift? They didn't.
They don't even re-gift it to anyone! They are saying, without words, "nobody can enjoy this gift if I don't."
I think about how I waited in a line for an hour buying that gift and got 7 new zits from stress driving during rush hour to pick out the perfect gift... that you won't look at for 365 days- past the day you received it.
This year, I'm narrowing down the purchases to the most base level thought which is, "This is something, I'll buy it."
My Mom had a storage shed built specifically to store her Christmas decorations. The storage shed is large enough to be a guest room. Instead, it has 200 tubs of decorations that date back to 1962. She typically is finished decorating the house with all of it around December 27th. It will take her until March 15th to take it all down and lug it back to the storage shed. I will never understand this. Never. At no point would my brain ever allow myself to:
A) not only keep Christmas decorations from 4 generations of celebration or...
B) I would never feel comfortable saying to anyone, "Oh this? Well, this is my enormous shed that a whole person could live in, no wait, I'll use it for tubs of broken lights and stuffed snowmen with potential bedbugs living inside them."
I'm the type of person that throws things away. If I haven't considered it for more than a year, it's trash.
Of course, I've been known to throw away entire dish sets because I couldn't be bothered with packing them to move. Goodbye dishes.
Let me get on this for a sec...
Holiday parties... don't get me started. Oh, too late.
These parties are for the most part, fun. However, there's always the ONE holiday party that becomes a social experiment in hell. Years ago, I was invited to a holiday party that had instructions of what to bring, wear, and had a line of text at the bottom of the card that I ignored and shouldn't have. It read, "surprise games! Bring your thinking cap! Win prizes!"
I showed up at this party and realized that everyone there was REALLY into group activities. (if you know one thing about me, I hate group activities or forced fun)
Everyone had a color coded name tag, were told to pick out a card from this bowl of blank construction paper bits cut into various shapes, and I was told, "if you want something to eat, make sure you get food before 9:30 because no food will be allowed during group activities."
Really? Says who? NOT allowed? What? I'm not ALLOWED? Uh.... good bye. I wish I was that cool, you know, just to have walked out and flip the bird... I wasn't that cool...yet. I was kind of shocked by the whole thing so I just got in line to get executed by the Third Reich of Forced Fun.
Lots of people in ironic sweaters, lots of couples that finish each other's sentences, lots of division between male and female, one chick who kept screaming "I'm a teacher!," and then there was me. The one who doesn't belong.
People were already making alliances for the group games and figuring out strategies for winning. Big pig faced beady eyed bloated Texas guys gripping their Coors Light like a grizzly bear, talkin' all loud, saying, "Melissa, hey, Melissa, come 'ere, Hey! You ready to get your ass kicked!" (then elbows his buddy who yucks it up in agreement)
What do you win? A 15 dollar gift card to Panera Bread. That's it.
The games started and the competitive tension was creating giant ulcers in my stomach lining. Lots of yelling. Lots of it. (if there's another thing you know about me right off, it's that I hate loud yelling and shrill voices.... annnnnnnnnnnnd DRUNKS.)
People were trashed. They were yelling insults and laughing at their own jokes, etc...
There was a big slobbery basset hound belonging to the owner of the house. At one point during the yelling and shrill high pitched women screaming at their husbands (or boyfriends) about how "women rule,"....At this point, the dog let out loud sigh and schlepped off into a dark corner by the coat closet.
I decided at that moment that I needed to know this dog and let him know that not every human sucks. I went back to the coat closet to visit this dog and then he growled at me and ran off. Okay so I'm totally alone in this? Yep.
How did I get out of this situation? I "went to the car to get something" and I never came back. Get this... nobody noticed. ha ha ha ha Isn't that awesome? They all remember me being there and remember me being "awesome at the trivia." I never participated in one question. That's so hilarious to me I can't even fully explain how it tickles me inside. There's even one chick to this very day that remembers me winning the game. (I cry laughing every time I think of her insisting that I won the game) They will know now if they read this... Remember.. fun surprises... Surprise, I wasn't there.
If you have ever worked retail during the holiday season, you know why humanity hasn't progressed. There's nothing, NOTHING, more disgusting than people who want things real real bad. It's horrible.
I remember working at a puppet theatre (I worked there for years actually) every year during the holiday season at North Park Mall in Dallas. Very ritzy mall, full of entitled rich people who live in University Park or Highland Park. I remember one year when we were doing the show "Little Drummer Boy." I remember this rich white woman full of questions and fear walk in to buy tickets. She was physically posturing a sheltering type move with her transparent skinned made-in-lab children as though they were walking into a strip club. She cautiously approached the ticket counter and kind of whispered her question in full CIA spy mode... "I want to buy tickets, but I have a question... is it scary?"
I remember looking at her in silence for at least 2 long seconds before I said, "It's the Little Drummer Boy." This woman said, "Okay? But you didn't answer my question. Is it scary?"
To this I said, "Yes, you know what... it is. It's horrifying. We sell tickets to entire families so that they will need therapy following the 45 minute puppet show about the birth of Jesus Christ and a poor kid who played the drums for him."
She looked confused and then walked away. She came back about 5 minutes before show time and asked to speak with the manager. Of course, I had already debriefed everyone who worked at the theatre about this stupid person so I had no fear in "getting the manager." The manager/owner, an older man who routinely snapped at people's stupidity, came out and got an ear full. He told her that if she assumed it was a business founded on scarring children, she had no business raising them. Boom.
I wanted Maury Povitch "dance it out in her face" whilst saying, "uh uh, wat! WAT NOW! WAT! uh uh uh."
Just so you all know... if you make an ass of yourself during the holiday season in front of any retail worker at a mall, they all get together after work and drink hard liquor because of you. If sending ill will actually worked, anyone who popped off to the over-worked retail employees would explode into shards of goo upon exiting the store. Trust that. Oh, and they will remember your ass next year too. Believe that.
I hope you all get your shopping done with ease, and please, if you go to any holiday parties that end up sucking real hard... just "go to the car to get something." It works. There will be no repercussions for doing this because everyone will be drunk later and forget all facts relating to that party. It's like you get to be there without being there. It's truly the best idea, trust me.
Feel free to comment on this with your own holiday horror stories and let's all have a big o' laugh.
-Bah Humbug
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