Screw Christmas!

Hello there. It's that time of the year again! Time for cheer and gifts and warmth! BZZZZZ!!! Wrong! Time for a gigantic reality check!

If you are anything like me, you like driving. Well, you can forget about having any pleasure for the next few months. It's diabolically cold. Even if you've got winter tires (on which you had to spend quite a bit of money at some point, remember?), it's still slippery, the traffic is horribly slow, and there are loads of traffic jams because of this crazy Christmas hullabaloo.

You know your daily commute to work that normally takes half an hour? Well now it takes a whole hour, and when you go to the parking lot after an exhausting day's work, you find you need to spend another half an hour scraping the ice and snow from what used to be your car and is now a vaguely a car-shaped snowman.

Well, eventually there's a weekend. You want to go to the shops to get something to snack on. Usually this kind of thing takes 20 minutes at the most. Now it's an hour because of the traffic jams and monstrous queues. The shops rose the prices of everything before Christmas, and then took it back down to what it was before, calling it a huge discount, which is a flat-out lie but everyone buys into that and decides now is the time to do the shopping.

Well, at least you can listen to the radio while you wait, right? Only if you like Shakin' Stevens a lot. Maybe some TV? Christmas ads and crappy Christmas specials all around. The same goes for most content on YouTube and other sites. You can't look anywhere not to see some crummy Christmas episodes.

But there's at least the most positive side of Christmas! Everyone's nice to each other, and everyone stops arguing and there's a general atmosphere of love and understanding. Uhhh... wait a second... can you remember when this was last actually true? What actually happens is we tell ourselves that everyone is nice and all, and while some people do try (which is terribly hypocritical if they act otherwise the rest of the year), most people don't change. And because of this, everyone is disappointed at each other and when it comes to sit at the Christmas table with your family, what normally ensues (after the usual dose of wine and eggnog) is a huge argument that lasts until everyone goes to bed and everybody wakes up the next morning with a rotten humor and the realization of the fact that the holiday they've been looking forward to all this time actually turned our to be the worst time they've had for a while.

And sure, you can't remember Christmas like this at all from when you were a child because, well, while everyone else was engaged in the holiday cluster****, you were playing with your presents and enjoying the Christmas atmosphere.

What Christmas is, then, is no more than a sentiment that most of us try to turn into reality so much and they fail, just to forget about the failure next year and try again. It's a gigantic loop of misery and it would probably be better to just abolish the whole deal and carry on with our lives as per usual and spare ourselves a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Now feel free to tell me how I'm the Grinch here, but I suggest you bookmark this thread and tell me about your actual experience after Christmas is over. I'm willing to bet at least some of you would take back the insult.

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I don't celebrate any holidays.. I will sit at home and watch a movie.

I simultaneously love Christmas (it's the time of year when people act the way they should all year), but yeah, I hate the driving stuff.

When I was a kid I never understood why older people liked to move to warmer climates, or why anyone would want to live in a place without snow and noticeably different seasons. That started changing when I got my driver's license. I spend all winter anxiously waiting for Spring.

Yeah I can't stand winter driving either and a part of me gets rather anxious around the holidays, but this morning I was doing a little shopping for the wife and was getting rather thirsty. I stopped for a coffee at Starbucks and when I got to the cashier he informed me the car in front of me payed for my drink. I instantly tell him I would like to pay for the one behind me. There are good people in this world.

I love how you wrote all of this. Almost like a stand-up comedian. You can just read it out loud pretending you are one.

That would so not be the reaction I'd have. How do you pay for a person when you don't know what they're ordering? If you have a lot of money, you could do it -- I've heard of celebrities paying for ordinary customers at restaurants. I would bet the person who paid for your drink probably donated maybe $100 (or maybe even more) to Starbucks and told them, "Keep letting everyone have free stuff until the money runs out." I doubt you did that, though. How much did you give? If it was $5 or $10, that might not pay for the person behind you if they're ordering $20 or $50 worth of coffee. You would just be giving them a discount.

And what if the person you're paying for sees you and thinks you're flirting with them or trying to pick them up? In some cases, this might not be so bad, but there's still a risk that it might be some old man or old woman who's gonna see you around town from time to time and know you as that weirdo who paid for their Venti Chestnut Praline Latte.

They got one drink, so it was no biggie.

If I could screw Christmas, I would.

The Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman apparently used to go to a restaurant when he was on the run, not let anybody leave until he was finished then pay for everybody's meal. Barely related to what you guys are talking about, thought it was funny though.

I think Halloween is the whore for you.

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Letterboxd

“Except for markf, you’re all a disgrace to cinema.”

That's a cool story. Works out; he doesn't want anyone to rat, and in return, he pays their meals for the inconvenience.

A man of the people

Also, I wonder if El Chapo confiscates all the cell phones, but then after he eats, pays their cell phone bills?

I'd rather screw on Christmas.

I'd like a screw on Christmas - you screw it on on December 24, and all your shopping is done, all you food in prepared, all your decorations are up, all your colored lights come on, all your presents are wrapped. Then a week or two later you unscrew it and it all goes off. Screw on, screw off.

The only thing better would be a "Clapper" Christmas... "Clap on! Clap off! Clap on, clap off... the Clapper!"