citizenmarie

No more pressure to feel happy or make up things to do for Christmas, so I have something to tell people -- rather than just have a nice relaxing day. No more having to explain, or rather not bother to explain, why my family doesn't get together for Christmas. No more wondering if I should invite myself over to my mum's in Ireland, or go over to England and spend a lot of time traveling to siblings who very much have their own lives and don't particularly want to be bothered by me! No more feeling I should be excited about finding mince pies and crackers in the USA. No more combating feelings of self worth, being single and having no family around. And watching all my friends leave and be their families. Or avoiding stupid sentimental Xmas movies, or wondering whether to send cards or call (and then feeling great when I said to hell with it!), or considering spend a lot of money to go to Hawaii and forget the whole business. No more "trying to be positive" about the whole thing when you just want to scream.

Yay, I have my happy normal self back. Up yours, Christmas!

OK... I take it back about the mince pies.

Tegwyn

Well bah humbug to you too! Christmas does get old when they start plugging the wares around October, and Santa looks just lovely next to the Halloween masks. Hope you get to have a smashing new year though. Bottoms up!

Guindalf

Marie's not alone. I hate Christmas too!

Everyone who knows me knows this to be true and this year, I actually scored a victory. I sent she who must be obeyed down to Florida to spend the week with her parents and two sisters and I got to spend the week working, looking after the dogs, watching films and generally avoiding and ignoring all things festive!

Heaven.

Signed, Grinch McScrooge
(both those films have sad endings anyway!)

citizenmarie

Poppy girl

Love it and shall be in Jingle Bell mood until after the 1st

SalopianFunk

Hey, Jingle All The Way is a festive masterpiece! :@

robin1234

One thing that gets me about Christmas ( we don't celebrate it at all) is the extent to which many people must waste significant amounts of electricity on those outdoor lights and displays etc. often the most lavish displays are folks who don't have two pennies to rub together, too.

Jerseygirl

They often leave them up for months...lighting them every night.

Redwing

+1

Uncle_Bob

Im starting to get a bit fed up with the Christmas the past few years. The main reason is that with time difference in Arizona we end up spending 4 hours in the morning doing Skype webcams with family mainly in the UK and on the east coast. I think we had one occasion where we were doing a webcam and someone tried to call us on Skype and my wifes sister called using facetime on her iPhone at the same time.

I prefer the days when it was just the telephone and you had an excuse to just say merry Christmas and hang up because everyone knew how expensive the calls were. And now we have free webcams and its got ridiculous because my mother and mother in law ask how long they we were on with the other one and get stupidly jealous if one of them had longer skype webcam call than the other. And now my wife has the kids open their presents on webcam which takes time, although it was funny to see my mother in laws reaction to my 8 year olds reaction on opening a dressing gown from her.

I think i will reclaim Christmas next year by unplugging the cable modem faking a call to the cable company.

Steerpike

What about the incredible amounts of money wasted on 'gifts' that people don't need or want. I'm all for buying stuff for the kids - I remember loving Christmas and all the gifts. But buying gifts for adults is silly, unless someone is broke/out of work, etc. Every year I get several 'gift baskets' (food) from people ... crappy collections of second-rate products with excessive packaging. I used to just take them straight into the kitchen at work, and let the vultures enjoy. One of my g/f's buddies gave her a heated towel rack for the bathroom once; it went unopened into the garage for about 10 years and then I finally took it to the recycle place last month when I was sure no one would notice. We have blankets, nicknacks, doodads, and misc crap lying around just waiting to be tossed when we think no one will notice.

I do buy my g/f a nominal gift these days (a $30 bag she wanted this year) and she gets me one (a pair of $50 slippers I actually needed this year) ... but that's it. My UK family know that I'll spoil them when they come visit, with hotels, dinners, etc.

paul32x

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a curmudgeon myself and Xmas is my least favourite holiday, except for the time off, of course! I hate it that the run-up seems to get earlier and earlier in the year, from the adverts to the stuff in the shops. I see people going into supermarkets getting tons of stuff for what is effectively only one day when the shops are closed, and people eating stuff they would never dream of buying at any time during the year, just because they think it's the right thing to do -- my brother insists on buying goose for Xmas dinner because we had it when we were growing up, but never touches it otherwise, and always gets a stollen, which goes un-eaten usually. Still, each to their own, I suppose, and I'm sure the kiddies and the shops enjoy it!