TASK #45: HOLIDAY DEATH RACE
“Ugly Christmas sweaters are a cry for help.” Joe Doe
I’m going to do a little bah-humbugging now but it’s not because I don’t like Christmas, I do, but hell, why does it have to start in October and be so totally about shopping? The first time I heard “Holly Jolly Christmas” this year was a day or so after Halloween. I said to my wife, “I like this song.” Cut to now, December 10th, and I nearly jump out of my skin when the warbly first note of that ridiculous ditty rolls out of my car speaker. I want to find some relative of Burl Ives and start screaming at him/her incoherently.
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Take a few days off from the Christmas season. Think about what you’ve got, not what you’ve got to get.
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The worst thing about the early push isn’t the blatant commercialism of it all, because I get that a longer Christmas season is a longer shopping season; hell, if you’re the guy who makes George Foreman’s lame grill and you know that people buy more George Foreman grills around the holidays, then you sure as hell want to holiday season to be as long as possible. But what irks me is the “extended” holiday season has a Pavlovian effect–you turn into a raving Christmas creature, worried about Amazon and deals and free shipping and scrounging in some Wal-Mart bin for a polyester shirt marked “irregular” that you won’t even wear, let alone give as a present; and before you know it you’re picking out a tree and drinking too much at a holiday party and standing in line for a ham and listening to “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, only it’s not the version with Dean Martin, it’s some other hack and it doesn’t sound quite right and you’re honking at the guy in front you who’s about to take your parking space at Toys R Us…
And then it’s Christmas morning and you drinking coffee and watching you kid tear open his featured present, Star Wars Battlefront 2, for X-Box and he looks at you and says, “Dad I wanted Call Of Duty, World War 2.” And you feel like shit, but you shouldn’t…
So this year I’m taking myself out of the race. I’m going to have shopping-free days and not talking about Christmas days and I am not going on Amazon.Com until December 20th, or later. It will still be plenty of time to get what I want.
With free shipping.
TASK:
Take a few days off from the Christmas season. Think about what you’ve got, not what you’ve got to get.
Photos by tshein and Joe Doe
