Merry Christmas - You're Doing it Wrong

Here’s what I hate about Christmas, aside from green beans: how everyone always tells me how I’m celebrating it wrong.  If it’s not people demanding that I keep Christ the fuck in Christmas, it’s the losers who have to make everything into a competition and win Christmas.   Oh, and then there are the people who insist that I buy everything local, avoid Wal-Mart, spend time with the dumb people I love, make homemade everything, or do nothing at all, and ONLY read an obscure poem.  That they wrote.  I can’t hack it, people!

And I’ve been trying lately to understand why people have to have everyone do the exact same as they do. Like the “Christ in Christmas” people.  What are you so worried about? That people will mistake a candy cane for Jesus?  I just never read the part of the Bible where Jesus said,  “And I say unto you, that on each year, you will celebrate my birth with extra church and, by the way, if any philistine tries to ‘Seasons Greetings’ you, I command you to smite them with a frosty, ‘It’s Merry Christmas, bitches.’”  Although I have to say, I may have missed that part.  Most of my Catholic education focused on the leper-washing, wine-drinking Jesus, not the prune-faced dickhead. 

But don’t think you hipster agnostics are off the hook, either.  I am SO over you all demanding that I shop local.  Sometimes locals suck.  You know a local who sucks?  Liz Lessner.  Fuck you, Liz Lessner and your extra salty food, I’m glad you’re moving away.  But also: I don’t need all the soap/honey/hammered steel bracelets/crocheted purses/other useless stuff that’s made locally.  I need mass-produced and inexpensive things, preferably made by Indonesian children, because THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT.  No, seriously, until the local folks can make sweaters and skinny jeans for 6’4” tall 21-year-old young men that don’t cost 1 million dollars, I’m getting my stuff online.  I AM SORRY, OKAY?

Last, I don’t need anyone posting pictures on Facebook of their families with the caption, “This is what the holidays are all about.”  Families can make you twitchy sometimes, with their weird politics and dumb life choices and mannerless kids or whatever.  For some people, a merry Christmas means having a couple of days off of work, watching a Law and Order SVU marathon, and getting drunk on Kahlua.  Who are we to judge?  And stop bragging about your 70-degree temperatures, non-Ohioans!!!!  WE GET IT, YOU’RE WARM! 

We are in a tender place right now in this country.  One party just got smashed in an election, people feel misunderstood in their own communities, and God keeps punishing OSU quarterbacks. We don’t need to foment more misery by forcing our own ideology of how the holidays – and I mean whatever holiday you do or don’t celebrate – should be celebrated.  Just try to be nice, okay?