I've had it with Chrismas already

[Mitchell Andrus]

I don't mean just this year's.

It starts in September in some stores. You can't buy groceries or plywood without an old chestnut of a Christmas tune rolling around and around in your head for hours. Flashing chaser lights, plastic trees, plastic Santas, plastic wreath keeper boxes, plastic smiles on unhappy shoppers.

Chinese junk to clutter the house. Chinese junk to clutter the kid's rooms. Junk 10% off at Walmart this Tuesday, open til 10:30. I'm glad my kids have outgrown everything at Toys R Us.

Overly chipper TV hosts and guests telling us all how to make the perfect roast served on a table festooned with dead tree limbs and how to wrap and give the perfect gift. Nobody can keep up with that level of excitement.

The "most happiest time of the year" has become so perverted.... I just want to hide for a month or two.

Waddayawantforchrismas?



This year and going forward I'm celebrating the spirit of the season rather than the greed of the mass marketers. Family matters. I'm older and wiser now. I get it.

Maybe Christmas as we know it... as we've come to ruin it.... will fade away to be replaced by a more frugal understanding of our interconnected lives and the pleasures of peaceful coexistence.

We'd better hurry, I'm gonna snap... I'm not the only one.
.

[Carlos Alden]

You old grouch. I'm with you all the way.

Carlos

[Art Mulder]

The past years, what the North American "Christmas Season" has taught me is to shop early, and stay out of the malls in December.

We mail ordered a good chunk of our modest Christmas shopping, and we were basically done before December started.

[Eric Larsen]

Maybe Christmas as we know it... as we've come to ruin it.... will fade away to be replaced by a more frugal understanding of our interconnected lives and the pleasures of peaceful coexistence.

We'd better hurry, I'm gonna snap... I'm not the only one.
.

Nope, I still like Christmas.

Yes, companies use the season as an excuse to chisel an extra few dollars from consumers. But companies will use ANY excuse to chisel an extra few dollars from consumers. Since I'm jaded and cynical and have nothing good to say about (edit big) corporations in the first place, Christmas isn't all that annoying. (Some Christmas songs need to be interred -- Rudolph, Frosty, (edit those [censored] chipmunks) etc. But there are always new songs to take their place. I rather like "Christmas in Hollis" and "Gabriel's Message." But even those songs are 20 years old.)

Christmas shopping? I got sick of it, too. Now I only give gifts that I make. People have been complaining about cheap plastic crap for as long as I have been alive. So I refuse to be a giver or receiver of cheap plastic crap.

Christmas retail decorations go up October 'round these parts. I think that's too early. But who the hell am I? The Christmas Police? Just because I think the "season" lasts from the day after Thanksgiving to Little Christmas (aka Epiphany, aka Jan. 6) doesn't mean someone who wants to keep their lights up into February is wrong.

We also try to keep things fresh. Every year, LOML and I do Christmas differently. Sometimes it's English -- with pudding, Christmas Crackers, and a traditional roast goose. Sometimes it's Italian, with the Night of the Seven Fishes. Last year, we went to Napa and did a lot of wine tastings for Christmas. (Best Christmas ever.)

My hope is that every year, a few people in every town do what they can to help the less fortunate. Then they ask themselves, "Why don't we do this all year long?" As long as Christmas gets people thinking that way, I'll never tire of it.

[Pat Germain]

I can understand the frustration. But I also like Christmas.

Every year people complain about Christmas displays and commercials being so early. But it's been that way as long as I can remember. And, when I seek reliable sources, it appears there never really was a time when, "Everyone waited until after Thanksgiving".

I suppose one just has to tune out all the hyperbole, which can be difficult. Maybe we should just have a "no-tech" time at home. Turn off all the TV's, game consoles and computers. Play a board game. Read books. Wrestle with the kids on the floor. Drink tea and cider and just talk about nothing. That's my kind of Christmas.

[John Coloccia]

What are you talking about? I love Chri$tma$. I love $hopping for gift$. Walking through the mall$, looking at all the happy face$ of fellow $hopper$. I can't get enough of it. $eptember? I wi$h they'd $tart in Augu$t! That'$ what Chri$tma$ is all about.

[Mitchell Andrus]

What are you talking about? I love Chri$tma$. I love $hopping for gift$. Walking through the mall$, looking at all the happy face$ of fellow $hopper$. I can't get enough of it. $eptember? I wi$h they'd $tart in Augu$t! That'$ what Chri$tma$ is all about.

Ye$ $ir, that'$ the $pirit!!

(Looks like we sound like Daffy Duck.)
.

[Brian Effinger]

Mitchell..."You're a mean one, Mister Grinch...."
I'm kind of with you too. I hate the traffic, all of the idiots out there and the commercialization. But I still really like Christmas. I still get excited on Christmas eve, and I'm 33. I just wish that the season started with the Thanksgiving day parade, like it used to.


Oh, and I hate all of the noise, noise, NOISE!

[Jim Koepke]

With the changers of money pursuing their lust it is easy to see why for some of us the true spirit of Christmas has become lost.

Not long ago, this feeling crept into my heart. Thankfully, my life experience gave me reason to renew my "faith."

Enjoyment can be found in the challenges of making gifts for family and friends.

It is disconcerting to be looking at back to school supplies for the grandchildren next to displays of merchandise that only sucks the joy out of the joy of giving.

My wife and I have moved away from the big city area of San Francisco Bay and now live in the hills a dozen miles from a small city along the Columbia River. We go days without seeing anyone but each other.

I put up lights a few days ago, not to celebrate the holiday but to light the path from the house to the shop. As long as they work, they will stay up.

Just walk calmly and smile at those who are hurried and haggard by the season. For them, each year is a new challenge. They have not learned the feeling or gift of Christmas all year. That is why they hurry so. If they were giving all year, they would not be in a rush nor worn wary by the unfamiliar territory.

Maybe if the commercialist gave us value all year they would not have to make such a big push at this time of year to get into the black.

It has become too much about getting our money, not getting our loyalties or respect.

Merry Christmas
May you enjoy a Happy and prosperous New Year.

and remember, illegitimus non carborundum

(Don't let the b@$+@rd$ grind you down)

jim

BTW, I am a liberal but that does not mean I am an atheist, a destroyer of Christmas, a socialist or any of the many other things that some want you to believe about liberals.

[Josh Reet]

Christmas is only crappy if you let other people tell you how to enjoy it.

I personally have a great time. I love making gifts if I can and I love giving (or getting) gifts that teach me something. I get my sisters..oops..I mean brothers...tools that I know they need for their houses. I'm building a bookshelf for my nephews room. I get stuff like good cookbooks from my sister-in-laws. This year I know for a fact that I'm getting a ukulele kit that I've been excited about trying to build but haven't been able to justify to myself. We have a great time at traditional dinners and parties. We freeze out butts off at the traditional "christmas eve golf and beer rodeo" at the local course. Plus now with the first wave of the next generation coming on-line, we get to enjoy it through a new set of eyes.

<preaching on>

And on top of all that, one of the best parts of xmas for me is going to the mall and grabbing a big pile of "giving tree" requests that the local Salvation Army sets up. There are a lot of poor families that have a lot of problems in our country right now. You can rant on about how commercial xmas has gotten (and it probably has). But if I can do anything about it, I'm not going to let any kid cry on christmas because his family doesn't have the money to give him a gift or shiver because they can't buy him a coat. Sure, ti's easy to say "oh, kids just buy into the want-want-want crap that is thrown at them", and maybe so. But now isn't the time to argue about it. Change starts from the top, not from the bottom on the backs of some poor kid with loser parents. If I can help a little, I'm going to. It makes both of us feel good.

<preaching off>

[Al Willits]

As a kid I came from a pretty dysfunctional family, X-mas was usually about who bought who what, who lost at the annual after dinner poker game, and then all the batching about what relative was doing what to you know who.

So for me it wasn't so much what X-mas meant to me, more so what it could mean.

Today our families are all but gone, only 5 of us remain.

Ya all the insanity in the stores or on TV gets boring after about 2 days but each X-mas season the wife and I get together and turn the lights down, and listen to the just before X-mas program by Garrison Keilor and just enjoy what part of X-mas we can.


For what its worth, I'd gladly put up with all this insanity to just sit with a large family and enjoy Christmas and what it means.

Al...Merry Christmas all, whether ya like it or not...

[Harry Hagan]

Where I come from we celebrate Christmas on December twenty-fifth. Maybe you're talking about X-mas, whatever that is.

[Craig Fales]

I don't mean just this year's.

It starts in September in some stores. You can't buy groceries or plywood without an old chestnut of a Christmas tune rolling around and around in your head for hours. Flashing chaser lights, plastic trees, plastic Santas, plastic wreath keeper boxes, plastic smiles on unhappy shoppers.

Chinese junk to clutter the house. Chinese junk to clutter the kid's rooms. Junk 10% off at Walmart this Tuesday, open til 10:30. I'm glad my kids have outgrown everything at Toys R Us.

Overly chipper TV hosts and guests telling us all how to make the perfect roast served on a table festooned with dead tree limbs and how to wrap and give the perfect gift. Nobody can keep up with that level of excitement.

The "most happiest time of the year" has become so perverted.... I just want to hide for a month or two.

Waddayawantforchrismas?



This year and going forward I'm celebrating the spirit of the season rather than the greed of the mass marketers. Family matters. I'm older and wiser now. I get it.

Maybe Christmas as we know it... as we've come to ruin it.... will fade away to be replaced by a more frugal understanding of our interconnected lives and the pleasures of peaceful coexistence.

We'd better hurry, I'm gonna snap... I'm not the only one.
.

Sounds like you just need to have a cup of Candy Cane Lane tea.

[Dave Lehnert]

Well.......As one of them retailers that set up Christmas in October I will give my take.

You always get "Its not Halloween yet" (thats you) crowed when we set up. There are two reasons for this.

- 1st, If you are not a (Big chain) or the like you have to bring in all your stock early. If you let the wholesaler sit on it you run the risk of your competition (Big chain) buying it from under you. And they will just so you don't have it. If you have it in house may as well put it out on the sale floor. Cant sell it in the back and the patio furniture are is empty anyway.

-2nd, People use lay-a-way like mad. A lot of shopper shop early. They sit back a laugh now at other shoppers looking for hot items. That Pet hamster that is HOT right now. Back in Oct you could get all you wanted.

As a side note Christmas was horrible last year. I can walk into a lot of stores now and see they did not buy much for this year to sell. It is all old stock from last year.

[Al Willits]

Where I come from we celebrate Christmas on December twenty-fifth. Maybe you're talking about X-mas, whatever that is.

If that was for me, I asked 8 reasonably intelligent people here and they all agreed X-mas was short for Christmas, I also said "just before" unlike you evidently we celebrate the reasoning and season of Christmas for more that one day.

Al