My Favorite Day: The Day After Christmas

Can I bitch about Christmas now?? Is it OK with ya’ll? (I’ll take that as a Yes.)

God, am I glad Christmas is over! The stress, the pressure and the bullshit.
Why? That’s all I want to know is why! Why do we put ourselves through this Hellishness every year? And Expensive Hellishness to boot.

I worked in the ER both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. I can’t tell you how many people came in for Dumb Ass Stuff. Rashes. Rashes that they have had for days. A Cough, The Sniffles, A Stomach Ache. (Hasn’t anyone heard of Tylenol?? Or Rolaids?? How about Robitussin??) Amazing. Anything to have an excuse to get away from the Stress…and the disappointment. So much easier to seek the Great Escape of the Emergency Room than to face what is really going on. Then, of course, there’s all the people who dragged Grandma out of the Nursing Home, to prop her at the end of the Christmas Table (so that they won’t feel even guiltier than they already do for stickin’ her in a Nursing Home) who then call 911 when she’s exhibits any one of the hundreds of usual symptoms of chronic disease states that she possesses. So we have her blood drawn and analyzed, her chest X-Ray’ed, and her head Cat Scanned – all to find out the only thing she is suffering from is old age and dumb ass relatives.

But, for all those who manage to grit their teeth and stay the course at home, there’s the barrage of shitty, useless unwanted gifts to grin and bear. I’m so tired of getting gifts that are designed for people that "you don’t know very well, but feel obligated to give them something anyway". I don’t need anything – really. And anything I do need, I buy for myself. Anything I really WANT, no one is going to buy me anyway so, save yer money! Give it to charity, or better yet – pay off your credit cards with it and tell me about it later. I’ll be much happier for you…and for me.

But, no one wants to give it up. So, we have to keep on buying gifts for kids that have so much stuff it’s coming out their ears, adults who have absolutely no intention of using what you gave them, and don’t need it or want it anyway, and babies who would much rather play with the bows and the ribbons than the expensive overload of gifts that you just gave them.

To top it all off, the cherry on the sundae is all the religious in-fighting over what should and shouldn’t be said, done, printed, published, televised, put in the Town Square, put in the Public School, put in the Courthouse and sent out as an Official statement. Oy vey! It’s enough to start those crying statues of the Virgin Mary puking!

I say next year we all stay out of the stores and stay in our own homes and just chill. We don’t send cards with messages of any kind and we let everyone do their own thing without comment or criticism. We eat the food we would normally eat and forgo the extra 5 or 10 pounds, and we actually get a decent amount of sleep in the final week of December. We take all the money we would have spent – and pay off our debt, or stick it in the Savings Account. And finally, we take all the time and energy we would have exerted…and spend it curled up on the couch with our families or friends, watching a movie with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of beer. Then we could all get together sometime in February, when there's nothing to do any way, and there's far less stress and pressure to meet some imaginary standard set by Hollywood decades ago...
...So wadda ya’ll think??

Love and Peace,
One Seriously Baked Christmas Ham