a cotton-headed ninny-mudgins in recovery

for many people, the months of november and december serve as a magic-filled, sparkly time to prepare for this mystical time of christmas, when families come together, cheeks are constantly rosy, and calories magically don't count. the weeks leading up to christmas display the ultimate paradox of warm fuzzy feelings in the darkest, coldest time of the year. we live into fluffy ideals of world peace, love, and hope. and yet, for most people, neither a big fat man in a red suit bringing perfectly wrapped gifts nor a glistening babe sucking his thumb in a manger bring any kind of peace or warm fuzzy feeling. for many people, christmas means anxiety...fear...inadequacy...grief. for me, the greatest image of christmas is the one put out at the beginning of frosty the snowman: the first christmas snow. that first blanket of snow that covers up all the dead things of november and winter, all the things that are ugly and starving and sleeping but that will be revealed in the warming of spring.


christmas is like eating a whole lot of cookie dough...it seems like such a good idea at the time.

{i'm havin' a food baby...}

so, typically christmas makes me bitter and cynical. i desire honesty rather than fluffy imaginary happiness. this year, i'm not willing to be pissed for the next 2 months; i'm also unwilling to give up authenticity in order to feel a momentary sense of happiness {even if i am willing to eat lots of cookie dough...}. so for this christmas season, i am going to change my christmas reality and i am going to use this blog to work through some of those things about christmas and about my own christmas experience that make me want to create a santa claus pinata and go to town with a baseball bat...

{i seez a santa. nom nom nom.}

so for this blog, i offer up 8 things that make me want to scream like macaulay culkin in home alone:

{aaaahhhhh}

8. winter is not ugly. it's fugly.

winter may look like a magical wonderland in places like colorado:

but in western pa, winter is like the red-headed stepchild of the seasons: forgotten, dead, and abandoned. our lack of continual sunshine is depressing and ugly. most christmases end up being gloomy, overcast skies over frozen, leafless grounds:

{curse you, photographers, who make this hideous day look breathtaking....}

7. it's so expensive

i don't think i need to even go into the financial burden of the christmas season on a grad student.

but i think the problem lies less in the fact that i don't have the money i'd like to spend on the people i love. it's more about the sense of obligation. 

6. family woes

i'm not gonna say that my family is quite to the point of griswold family christmas 

{look around you, helen! we're on the threshold of hell!}

...that said, family gatherings often do not end well in my household. there's something about the mix of pressure to not spill a giant meatball on your lap (a recent accomplishment of mine) and not to talk about religion and politics and sex and drugs and rock and roll and ..... so wait, what do we talk about?? i love my family. i hate gathering my family together in a way that makes some people feel powerful (the ones who provide food and can afford gifts) and others feel weak (those who accept the charity of others). 

5. my allergy to pine trees

despite my lifelong allergy to evergreen trees, my father has insisted on having a live tree in the house every single year. i consistently dread the month during which going into my parent's living room becomes a complete blur of sniffles and icky-ness. 

4. some terrible christmas songs

not all carols are bad. i will list a few that i think suck:

santa baby

grandma got run over by a reindeer

i saw mommy kissing santa claus

all i want for christmas is my two front teeth

surfin santa

the 3rd verse of we wish you a merry christmas

the alvin and the chipmunks christmas song

...

3. the creepy santa at the mall

i have already been criticized for my dislike of santa in a previous post, and i hope in the next few weeks to break down my walls of bitterness and rebuild my inner child's love of santa claus. but no matter what, i find a stranger dressing up and sitting at the mall and taking pictures with your kids is incredibly creepy.

{ho. ho. ho. you'll shoot your eye out kid!}

2. the combination of red and green

as a lover of art and color and fashion, the combination of red and green makes me want to vomit.

the end.

1. the same old boring story

even the jesus narrative sort of gets boring after the 24th time of hearing it. there's nothing fresh, nothing exciting, nothing thrilling about the story. i no longer have that wide-eyed, child-like joy at hearing the stories of christmas. i'm the grown up in the polar express. i'm the little girl in miracle on 34th street. i'm the curmugeonly father in elf.

the question is, how do i rediscover my joy for christmas? how do i stop investing in a christmas feeling and start giving into the joy of christmas?

i guess we'll find out over the next few blog posts...