Scroogy McGrinch

For years, I've had some of the elements of a Scrooge. I rarely went so far as saying Bah Humbug, but trust me, I was thinking it loudly.

There are many reasons for this, but the primary one has to do with the commercialization of everything, not just Christmas. There was a time in my life when I liked Christmas carols. They used to have a connotation of Christmas cookies, Santa, and snowmen.

Now? Hallmark and Macy's, shopping lines and crowds, cranky people buying giftcards "just to get their shopping done..." Oh, and, people? There's no Santa. Sorry.


I can't pinpoint exactly the first time I thought about my hatred of Christmas, but it had been brewing for some time. The first time I heard normally rational people talking about how Christmas was going to be ruined if they couldn't get their spoiled little brat an Elmo doll might have been it.

Could have been the first story about a fist fight over a $29 DVD player at Wally world.

Or maybe it was the first time I noticed how unhappy everyone looks while Christmas shopping. There's no joy in finding the perfect present, just stress about crossing items off a list.

Ugh.

Just the thought of broaching the mall area of Bangor stresses me out normally, now it's strictly a no-go between the Halloween and New Year's. Too scary. Really, it's just a matter of time before we have a "postal worker" incident at a mall, there's simply too much stress in one small place.

Ugh. I'm getting agitated just thinking about all this crap.


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Having said all this, for some reason this year I don't feel as stressed. It could be the onset of online shopping, which led to me not having to leave the house as much. It could be the wifey, who tackles all of the difficult people to shop for in our family.

Hell, it could be the fact that I'm getting to go to the Celts/Magic game the 23rd.

Whatever it is, for the first time since we've moved into our house we've played Christmas music (solely while decorating the tree, of course.) Hey, we even put up some lights this year (just candles, anything more is tacky.) And in the miracle of miracles, the wifey even found a tree topper that we didn't hate. No, it's not a PBR can.

I'm sure I'll be sick of the holidays before I get home from our seemingly endless trek around New England, but until then, I'll just sit back and relax in my relatively un-scroogilicious mood.