Bah Humbuggers

Christmas 2003 Part 1

As I sit here on November 24th, I thought I'd get a jump on the holiday season and proclaim today...I hate Christmas!

Not really Christmas the way Norman Rockwell saw it, those Christmases are cool. Unfortunately, my family was more of the Norman Bates types when it came to the holidays.

It seems like we're always celebrating something in America. Mother's Day, Fathers Day, heck even groundhogs have a day to celebrate. Now that we've added the fact that we celebrate bad things like every month's anniversary of 9-11 we can all just be merry year round.

I'll never understand why Americans want to remember the bad things. To me bad things are something to forget and the quicker the better. Like the Christmas my friends bet me twenty dollars I wouldn't walk around the block wearing nothing but a trench coat. Seems like an easy twenty doesn't it? I mean it's not like you're exposing yourself, nobody will know you're naked under that trench coat. What you don't expect is your friends to call the police and tell them a pervert in a trench coat is walking around the neighborhood having unnatural relations with mailboxes.

There is no excuse the police will believe, when they find you walking in the winter wearing only a trenchcoat. And trust me, this is not the way you want to go to jail. On Christmas the jail is full of merry drunks, and a guy wearing a trenchcoat is the same as Britney Spears in a bikini to them.

Now this is a bad thing and I don't celebrate it every year. In fact, we don't even talk about it or speak to those so called friends any longer.

Many years ago Christmas came on December the 25th. Now it comes on November the 20th and runs until New Years. You know it's Christmas when you walk down the Halloween aisle listening to the store's Muzak play Christmas carols.

Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way...oh what fun it is to shop and give us all your pay!

But what does Christmas really mean? "Oh Chip I always donate a turkey dinner to the homeless shelter, after all it's Christmas and the time for giving." Well aren't you sweet...Give em a turkey at Christmas and hope it fills them up enough to make it all year, cause' hey buddy come next year there's another turkey coming your way.

It means climbing all over your house with a staple gun nailing lights everywhere. Pilots flying over Union County are blinded by the display my wife has me working on.

It means erecting a huge evergreen in my living room and embellishing it with thousands of lights. Astronomers once looked through my window and mistook my tree for a new undiscovered galaxy. We spend two weeks putting this thing up and then my wife spends the holiday preventing me, my daughter and our cat from messing it up.

It means subsidizing the Postal Service by sending cards to one hundred people. Fifty of these I don't even know and forty eight of the ones I do I don't like. The remaining two I probably have mistaken for someone else. We even include pictures of ourselves in the cards. Now how well can we know these people if we have to include a picture to remind them who we are?

My wife tells me this year we are going to make a list, and the people we send cards to that don't send one back are being cut from our mailing next year. That's why when my wife hands me the card to sign and seal, instead of my name I'll add the line "You're wife is a ho ho ho." I'll bet I don't spend so much on stamps next season.

It means circling a parking lot like a shark waiting for a parking spot. In my case it also involves showing the Christmas spirit by soundly cursing anyone who beats me to one.

It means slipping the Mall Santa a twenty to tell your kid Santa is all out of the popular toy every kid wants and no store has. For another twenty he'll tell your kid that while his friend Billy is indeed getting the coveted toy ...But it's only because his mom and dad are divorcing and this is his last Christmas together as a family. Therefore, it's good thing when you don't get the popular toy.

It means wandering around a million stores trying to find a gift for the guy that has everything. Here's a tip, buy him a calendar so he knows when everything's payment is due. I have no doubt this guy has said "Charge it" more than "Merry Christmas."

But Christmas doesn't have to be a drain on your wallet. It doesn't have to make you feel like a victim of a good shafting by the billionaires who own Walmart or the former billionaire now bankrupt owners of K-Mart. I have this little thing I do, sort of like a tradition with me. It makes me happy for the holidays, lets others know I've been thinking about them and doesn't cost me a dime.

I use all those Christmas cards I get in the mail and put them to good use. (No matter how much I make people mad they still seem to send me Christmas cards...) Certainly they picked out only the finest card to send me, one they would want to receive themselves. That's why, I white-out their signatures, sign the card and send it back to them. Such a lovely note they wrote, I just left it. I think getting this card will let them know how we really feel about them.

Be sure to read Part 2 next week...How to return the crap you get for cash!

The contents of this page does not necessarily represent the opinions of Maynardville.Com, it's owners or the staff.