fa-la-la-enough all ready

I hate Christmas. Any sacrificing and sleep-deprived woman would admit that. There's nothing in it for us, never has been. It overtaxes our bulging schedules with chores that have no other purpose than appeasing people who need to learn to appease themselves. These ingrates need nothing yet we are out there in the worst weather of the year shopping for them.


And baking up huge amounts of nutrient-free sugary things for mostly overweight people, probably subtracting years from their lives which would actually result in less work for us, who says I can't see the bright side.  And then there's the hanging of the tinsel and letting people in your house who dribble cocktail sauce on your carpet and manage to find your twelve-year-old scotch in the back of the cupboard behind the oatmeal box. And then there's the Christmas letter. I don't need reminders that I am still in relationships with people who think myself and sixty others want to know what the doctor said after their colonoscopy and take three paragraphs to do it.

Like Lucy of Peanuts fame says, "I never get what I really want."  My husband asks if I want jewelry. I'm not a jewelry person. I don't see the point of adorning the body with pieces of rock and metal like an Aborigine tribesman. They just weigh you down and attract lightning and I am always fearful I'm going to leave the diamond ring in a public restroom while washing my hands and my brain is addled by too many Kessler's cocktails. As my son said when he first saw it, "you could punch some one's eye out with that." Not the usual comment one would expect but you would need to know Jason.

My spare bedroom is a sea of purple and pink presents. I have many granddaughters, none have been named after me, not even a middle name although my first husband got his moniker attached to a grandson, that low down, seldom-to-visit grandfather that he is. It's not that I long for immortality, okay, maybe it is and I suppose my name might be too much for the little hussy to live up to.  It's best that I fade into obscurity some day, me and all my un-Christmasy notions.