Nightmare Before The Holiday Season

I don’t really find the holiday’s a nightmare.

Randy and I don’t live an existence where one family or another creates drama during the holidays.

I mean, I’ve read the stories. I know some people abhor the holidays the way I hate all the other drivers, yogurt, and bras that don’t fit. So, you know. All of them. 

I don’t mind the holidays. I even like them. But I don’t like like them.

I find gathering with loved ones and eating and/or exchanging gifts to be quite enjoyable. I love decorating my Christmas tree in an over the top fashion and don’t get offended by any offer from another human to enjoy my holiday. Regardless, of how they word it. I think, simply put, if someone says “Happy holidays” or “Merry Christmas” or “Have a nice Kwanzaa”, then they are just being nice. I think it would be a good gesture on everyone’s part to smile, say thank you, and perhaps offer up good wishes of your own. For fuck’s sake, I am so not looking forward to the rash of Facebook posts that are butthurt versions of “You can have my Merry Christmas when you pry it from my cold dead fingers”.

If someone asks me what my favorite holiday is, I always feel that little panicky, crawly feeling in my throat. I have no idea how to answer it. I don’t have a favorite. People who strongly identify with a holiday both puzzle me and inspire envious feelings. I want to get all excited about picking out a Halloween costume or look forward to decorating my house like Clark Griswald decorates his.

Honestly, the most festive thing I’ve done in a long time is to throw away the broke ass fake pine tree that sat on my front door step for a few seasons. Fine. For seven seasons. Also, I didn’t throw it away. I supervised. By “supervised”, I mean I nagged Randy to throw it out.

Holiday nightmareI don’t care about Halloween, but I wish I did. I see the attraction in hiding behind a mask of some sort. There is also the extra attention you get when you are dressed outrageously. The thought of extra attention makes my eyelids sweaty.

I decided, that today, I would dress up for Halloween at work. I don’t know if other people at my new job dress up or not. I don’t even care. I am going to show up today in a full costume.

They just can’t know it’s a costume.

I thought about dressing in head to toe black and wearing a lot of black eyeliner and going as a witch. So, basically, just wear exactly what I wore on Tuesday.

Then I thought I could stuff toilet paper rolls in the shoulders of the one blazer type jacket I own and go as “Eighties Michelle”. People would notice rolls of toilet paper in my clothes, though. Pretty sure.  And I don’t think it will accurately portray what shoulder pads looked like back then.

Besides, that jacket has some button issues. There are two brown buttons that are very strategically placed, almost like pasties. But the buttons have come loose and are kind of dangling there by strings. I wore that jacket to work the other morning. I share a room with two other women and when I walked in first thing, I cleared my throat to get their attention and then started flicking my buttons. So really, I burned that costume already.

I’m left with two choices. I can either wear a matching pair of socks and go to work dressed as someone who does laundry like a grown up. Or, I can go out for lunch and go as someone who isn’t trying to eat more healthy.

Honestly, I’m not going through the trouble of matching up socks. Fuck that. So that leaves going out for lunch.

I think I might get the hang of latching on to a holiday. How about you?

42 Thoughts.

  1. I love the blazer with strategically placed loose buttons as a costume! And dressing with matching socks, like a grown up who does laundry is such an obvious work costume, I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this one all these years! Very funny stuff. We threw away out 20plus year old Christmas tree last year when it was just a wire frame with a hint of green left. So I aplaud you for only keeping yours for seven. Happy Halloween!

  2. Actually rolls of toilet paper would look exactly like shoulder pads from the ’80’s. It was a decade when people did a lot of cocaine.

    And while the other holidays are okay I get genuinely excited–some people think too excited–about Halloween because it’s a time when I feel like I can be someone other than who I am. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone so I can’t explain the appeal of being Hannibal Lecter or Rorschach–characters I hope I have nothing in common with. Then again I can’t really explain the appeal of wanting to be Columbo, Harpo Marx, or the second Doctor–characters I hope I have some things in common with.

    And I really love The Rocky Horror Picture Show but I only watch it or listen to the music during the month of October. It’s a silly self-imposed rule, but it’s like pumpkins or candy corn or trick-or-treating. If I indulged in it all the time it might become just an everyday thing and not something I look forward to all year. And I guess that’s kind of the point of holidays–they give us something to look forward to.

  3. Love your costume ideas! I may have to try one (or two) out. My youngest constantly asks what my favorite holiday is, and like you, I don’t really have a favorite. I think once you become an adult and have to do all the work (cook, shop, decorate, clean, etc), it’s not so great anymore. I tell him I believe 4th of July is my fav now. Pretty sure it’s because all there is to do is drink and maybe set off a few firecrackers.

  4. You are so LUCKY that you don’t have families that create drama! Do you know this? LUCKY! We opted out of the traditional dragging kids to every house and making everyone miserable a long time ago. More recently, its been “if you can get here, I will feed you” and as of last year, “we are going to Universal Orlando for some fun, wanna join us?”

    It doesn’t have to be a huge stressful thing. When I look at people already fighting in the aisles, I just shake my head and feel sad. What’s the point of the last three months of the year basically hurting you so much you become homicidal? FUCK THAT indeed!

    • Oh, I already know how lucky I am. I am eternally grateful that there is not a lot of drama at the holidays. We have our share of drama, but it’s usually on a ‘as-happens’ basis.

  5. I HATE Christmas. Not the ‘Jesus’ birthday’ part (and I LOVE the jingle barking dogs) …the part about commercials and store displays and the constant reminder that there’s more money at stake than love. Christmas makes me want to drink and drink and drink some more. Straight out of the bottle. I can feel it coming…saw a Christmas display in town at Home Depot and if I would have had a different credit card that worked for laundry soap I would have gone to Walmart. It ALWAYS feels like pre-Christmas mayhem in there…

    Now, Halloween….did you know they keep the time change after Halloween because too many kids were getting run over when they ended Daylight Saving before October 31?

    I’m wearing my Funeral dress for Halloween. I was in Goodwill and from across the store I saw the most beautiful fairy-purple/unicorn-blue iridescent material and I was drawn to it like a deprived addict. I was gonna buy it and make pillows, if I had to. But it FIT! I knew immediately that this was the best I was ever gonna look, so for $10, I am ready to go in the box for my viewing. It even zips in the back so the mortician will have lots of choices in getting me beautifully and artfully arranged. Won’t even need my body! If worse comes to worse, and I don’t get to donate my body to the criminal detective school to train cadaver dogs after my funeral, they can just bury my dress with a 3D plastic model of me!

    But, in the meantime, my Funeral dress can be used for ‘Good Witch Glenda’ and ‘Zombie Snow White’ and ‘Fancy Nancy’ (my little library patrons LOVE Fancy Nancy and sometimes we have Tea Parties at the library). I have a lot of good times in that dress 🙂

    Good thing I planned ahead for my funeral, best costume ever! My boobs aren’t big enough to pull off the ‘slutty alter persona’ with any panache at all, so I guess the only ‘holiday’ I don’t dread IS Halloween…go figure.

  6. I have never liked Halloween. So happy to finally have two kids old enough to skip the whole walk around the neighborhood thing. I may be able to blissfully ignore it all this year. Here’s hoping.

  7. Halloween has always been a fave, except now, I have no one to carve my Jack-O-Lantern. The kids used to do it, but are all grown and not interested anymore and I’ll be damned if I’ll scoop out pumpkin seeds and slime. So, no carved pumpkin lanterns at our house this year! *sigh*

  8. I always find it a little odd to see how thoroughly the grown-ups have co-opted Halloween. I think I remember my parents dressing up for Halloween ONCE – they got invited to a Halloween party where they were supposed to, and they rented Raggedy Ann and Andy costumes from a local place where you could do that. I have enjoyed the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade the couple of times I made it there, there are some incredibly creative people out there and the costumes are tons of fun – just don’t usually have any particular desire to dress up myself (and I used to LOVE the dressing-up when I was a kid).

    Eighties Michelle would be an excellent costume, though!

  9. I don’t do much for the holidays, but this year I went shopping with my friend Sara and bought her the black frosting she needed to make her Halloween cupcakes…

  10. Happy to be in the north poll and no fucker to bother me IF ONLY I say spend whatever holidays doing what you want how you want With who you want hell it’s free time and that don’t come often enough . NOW where did I put my shoulder pads , drink, and movie !!!

  11. I totally love Halloween, well I do when I get to be at a Halloween party or gigging, as dressing like a vampire comes pretty naturally….obviously. Sadly this year will be another year of me being here on my own, not doing anything, pretty much like Christmas will be, so I’m afraid I will be in Bah Humbug mode again!

    The 80s are alive and well and living in my wardrobe, one day I will wear my beloved red jacket with shoulder pads again.

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