12 Days Of Real Christmas

I have the holiday spirit. I’m down with the fat man in red. I dreaming of a white Christmas and my inner little drummer boy is itching to get out.

You know, or not.

I didn’t even put a tree up this year. This is the first year we don’t have a tree. Okay, that first year, it was just a 12 inch ceramic tree. But still. A tree. Of sorts. 

It’s just that we’re cleaning up and winding down and it seemed like so much senseless work to drag out all the Christmas stuff.

2017 has been a raging asshole in so many ways. 2017 makes me pine for 2016 and 2016 was terrible. Kind of the way orange julius makes me pine for Dubya. 

So, to get into the spirit, I decided to write 12 Days Of Real Christmas.

I’m just going to give you the last verse because this song is tedious:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

  • Twelve batches of Christmas cookies for burning
  • Eleven Netflix shows for binge watching
  • Ten faucets leaking
  • Nine walls for painting
  • Eight reasons why it’s my turn to clean the cat boxes
  • Seven relatives grumbling
  • Six creditors harping
  • Five Little Kings
  • Four pairs of jeans with elastic waistbands
  • Three eye rolls
  • Two boxes of three ply facial tissue
  • And Xanax shake and a cookie.

There. I’m filled up with holiday spirit now.

That’s a lie. I have zero holiday spirit.

I’m sick to death of the bickering over how we greet each other during the holidays.

I’m so very sick of people getting twisted up over whatever Starbucks is putting on their cups. Who fucking cares?

And for all that is holy, I never want to hear the phrase “war on Christmas” ever again.

If there really was a war on Christmas, I think the bullets should be made of gum drops, jelly beans, and marshmallows.

The chemical weapon would be eggnog because nothing says “my enemy will be soundly defeated” like nutmeg flavored phlegm.

Wish me a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or Happy Hanukkah and I will smile and graciously accept your desire that I am content and happy and send you along with similar sentiments.

How about if when someone wishes us joy and contentment, we accept those well wishes with grace and kindness and stop making up wars that don’t exist?

We have a lot of shit going on in life that is truly perilous. How are we possibly going to fix our issues if we’re getting hung up on “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas”?

Randy decided it was too sad for me to give up on the tree and got it out. It’s just a small tree. The lights from last year are still on it, but they’re bunched up in places and half the branches are bent downward.

I guess maybe I could straighten it up and put a few ornaments on it.

Maybe.

Also, I kind of want a hedgehog.

real christmas

43 Thoughts.

  1. In honor of Seinfeld, I personally think we should all just celebrate Festivus – the ‘airing of the grievances’ seems to occur regardless of how we label the occasion, so why not?!
    #peopleneedtostopitalready

  2. Being deaf *really* helps me get through the season. I don’t have to hear those godawful, horrifically saccharine Santa songs every blessed place I go anymore. LOVE this!

    I will not mourn the passing of this crazed season.

    Having said that, I love all the twinkly lights and the blow up reindeer on everyone’s lawns makes me smile. I miss them when they’re gone.

  3. You know my husband got me a Grinch outfit a few years ago?
    I wear it to work a few days out of December. It makes me feel whole.
    Now he thinks he wants a tree in the living room… for the Grandbabies.
    I say, “Life is about accepting Gramma for the Christmas evader she is.”
    And now I wait and watch to see just how motivated he is… I should probably tell him WHERE the little purple pre-lit faker is stashed…
    Nah…. I’ll just see how far through December we can get.
    I think the world-wide Christmas greeting should be, “Bottoms up! Cheers!”
    And we all take a drink 🙂

  4. How do I show my kids that Christmas is about family, friends and gratitude when my relatives decided we can’t have Christmas dinner at my house because it’s not”nice”enough! This after we fixed/replaced kitchen appliances and the kids are helping clean up in anticipation of their visit.
    I think Xanax went to the top of my list to Santa.

  5. We’re in the same hell. My brother-in-law and husband are remodeling the kitchen, which means everything from the kitchen and dining room is all over our house, spilling over from the island in the middle of the dining room which looks kind of like that giant, floating, plastic mess in the middle of the ocean.

    As someone with OCD, I have to walk through my house pretending I’m somewhere else, putting on a false sense of casual pleasantry to keep my brain from exploding daily. My husband has been applying drywall primer all week and is looking forward to tile demo next week. We pass each other around clutter island, repeating our mantra, “it’s going to be so pretty.” And our cat hates us.

    As the project dragged closer to the holidays, I gave up the will to “ho, ho, ho.” I can’t wrap my mind around adding to the current mess with boxes of decorations and the fake tree. I can’t even imagine where I could put it. So no decorations this year.

    On the plus side, I’ve unwittingly created a safe zone for Liam’s Jehova’s Witness friend to hang out – so there’s that.

    Please get a hedgehog and post lots of pictures. Hedgehogs make me happy.

  6. Last year I strategically leaned the two boxes with the three foot twig tree and the ornaments against the TV stand. It was very festive. I’m haven’t decided if it’s worth the effort this year. We’ll see. They don’t look bad on the closet shelf. And my husband won’t miss them.

  7. We haven’t had a tree or anything in years. My mother claims its because the apartment is too small, but I’m not sure we would bother even if we had the room. We don’t put up any other kind of decorations for Christmas. I don’t mind. Christmas has some bad associations with me.

    I prefer Halloween, anyway.

  8. I think I will focus on Advent this year rather than Christmas. I am even thinking of getting an artificial tree (gasps from the crowd that is my family).
    I avoid stores in December like the plague.

    And, besides if 45 and North Korea keep going at it we won’t have to worry about anything anymore
    (except whether you and I are meeting in that place where you will be singing Me and Bobby Magee!

  9. Definitely Number 11. Whenever I start to feel overdone by the season, I put on the cartoon Grinch. Not only does it bring back wonderful memories of my childhood, but it reminds me that the most important things in life aren’t things. Despite all the shit going on, there will still be good moments when the only sound is the snow falling. And the hedgehog purring.

  10. You are hilarious! Love your rant……………however, I do love the holidays. I don’t pay any attention to what I don’t want to hear and I just do my own thing. I love to decorate my dining room table with Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. I am making new memories with my granddaughter who is 3 – we made Hanukkah decorations and are making cookies tomorrow. I tune out the chatter I don’t care to listen to……….like the controversy about how we greet people on the holidays. It is ridiculous……..greet folks they way you want……….Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or Merry Chronikkah! ( not to be confused with Chronica which celebration of marijuana!).

  11. I guess I’ve always sort of figured that Christmas is a thing you do for your kids, and since I’ve never had or wanted any kids, I just didn’t get into doing Christmas very much.
    I remember the first year I lived in Oakland, my mom got her long time wish and we all went to Reno for Christmas, which was nice, but also weird for Briana and I because my parents got tickets to see a show while we were there, and it was Glen Campbell, one of my mom’s favorites. And don’t get me wrong, Glen Campbell was a goddamn monster guitar player, and at that show he played the William Tell Overture on his guitar holding it above his head.
    The thing was that Briana and I had seen Frank Zappa at the Circle Star the night before, and the contrast was sort of extreme.
    In retrospect, I think Frank would have approved.
    So do you know who Rocky Mountain Mike is? He’s one of the musicians who have been sending Fergus up with songs for a year now. “Mr. Tangerine Man” for instance.
    Well, he has come through again, in time to raise Christmas spirits.
    I give you (well, he gives you) “The Twelve Days of Trumpness”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HidPB4tXYBU

  12. So the “Five Little Kings” is Little Kings Cream Ale, right? That seems fitting. There seem to be quite a few people out there who are one short of a six-pack.
    And I’m pretty sure I’m one of them.
    Now if you’ll excuse me I seriously need to get back to binging. I’ve been mixing Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Bojack Horseman. It’s kind of like video eggnog.

  13. So agree about the non-issue of “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” What if you’re not sure if someone is jewish? Drives me crazy. As usual, Orange Julius is looking for trouble, where there is none.

  14. I’m so with you! I have had it up to here with the war on Christmas nonsense and bickering over the “correct” greeting. Why we can’t just be happy someone said something nice to us and go on our merry way I don’t understand. Instead, people prefer to get their panties in a wad over something that should be a non-issue. With all the serious problems we’re facing I really don’t give a rat’s you-know-what someone says to me. But I’ve been a bit of a Scrooge for a long time but this year it’s much worse.

  15. I loved the whole season when I was growing up. It was always exactly as long and as festive as it needed to be, and everyone was happy, as far as I could tell. And I grew up in Miami, “missing out” on snow (didn’t miss it at all).

    I used to have my own fair share of holiday spirit, wearing my Santa hat and jingle ball and fun earrings starting on December 1st, every year. When Mommy died in 2006, I continued to wear my stuff, but didn’t really decorate much. Married my college sweetheart in 2009, and he started decorating annually, without much help from me. I really kinda liked our little rosemary “trees” we’d buy annually, versus the artificial one we acquired from his stepmom after his dad died in 2013.

    The holidays pretty much suck, if you’re not a kid. But does anyone ACTUALLY give a fuck how we greet each other? I know I don’t.

    Love your meme. Happy fucking whatever the fuck you wanna fucking celebrate.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.