The Burden of Christmas

What have we done to Christmas? 

It's no longer what it used to be, what it's meant to be, which in my mind is a happy time spent with our families celebrating the birthday of Christ as good Christians should. A day of fun, laughter, good food and drink and unwinding together after a long year of toiling at the grindstone with the usual cheesy Christmas music in the background.

Instead Christmas has become the obligatory period of annual commercialism, the stressful time of being expected to spend vast amounts of money we don't have on Christmas presents. A time for shitting over what to buy for who and how much we have to spend on each person. A time of enormous stress and pressure to impress people who should love each other unconditionally, irrespective of who spends the most on who!

Christmas has become a luxury for the rich and a financial burden for the poor!



I rate myself in the bracket of being relatively poor as far as disposable income is concerned, I do not have spare cash for lavish gifts for everybody that I'm obliged to supply gifts for, this time of year for me is nothing but unpleasant stress over the looming massive financial burden, and to be honest, since returning from our 8 years abroad, away from this burden, I have come to HATE Christmas more and more each year. It causes fights between my wife and I and I have the stressful worry of what the hell do I buy for the people on the list I'm obliged to buy for and how am I going to afford it! Why has it become about this? Personally, Christmas is depressing! And no doubt I'm an asshole for thinking that way, because people are selfish!

I'm sure many will disagree with this sentiment and come with all kinds of crap like being creative and keeping it cheap! Well I'm not creative like that, I do not know what to make or buy for people, I don't know what people want or need, and worrying about it only makes me angry and resent this whole commercial culture of Christmas even more. Inevitably the result is having to trudge through shopping malls looking for gifts, or even worse, getting dragged through shopping malls for hours on end by my wife. There is nothing I enjoy less than getting dragged around shopping malls. My dear wife can attest to the fact that simply entering a shopping mall makes me intensely grumpy, and having to do that shit in the chaotic weeks preceding Christmas is for me pure painful HELL!!!

Back in the days when we were still in London, Christmas obligations involved a few phone calls back home, thereafter we were free to hook up with friends and go out and enjoy the day without the obligatory financial burden of having to buy stuff for lots of people. A thoughtful gift shared between wife and I was sufficient, the time together enjoying the day was worth far more!

Don't get me wrong, I love my family and I do enjoy spending some time with them, but this sick culture of handing out costly gifts to each other, for which we are being judged on based on how much money we spent on each person, makes me depressed. I cannot spend as much as some people so inevitably end up feeling guilty or left out. Certain people end up with mountains of expensive gifts while others not so much, and one kid usually ends up with more presents to open than the other. It's all disproportionate, it's messy, and at the end of it we are left with large bags of expensive torn-up wrappings and piles of random stuff which inevitably ends up in storage or lying around the home. And of course the kids end up with a mountain of unappreciated toys they barely notice as they rip open one after another, most they will probably only play with once then dump in the bottomless pit of the toy box! It's a big goddamned waste!

That said, I actually don't mind the kids getting some nice gifts, that's how it should be - gifts for the kids, the adults should not be obliged to buy stuff for each other. I do appreciate the gifts I get, very much, but it's usually stuff I don't need or don't use. How many bottles of shower gel I've collected over the years I can't tell you, and I've never used shower gel!

So what now, how does one escape this expectation to spend money on expensive gifts without being offensive? I've tried making the suggestion before that we only get gifts for the kids and not adults, but those who can afford to buy for everybody also expect to receive lavish gifts to open in the frenzy of present opening, which for some of us happens two or three times as we go to different groups of family. So of course the obligation cannot be ignored! Each year my wife and I discuss going away over Christmas to avoid all this, but in reality it won't help because despite sucking up the cost of travelling we will still be obliged to supply gifts for the same people, whether we see them on Christmas or not, because they have bought stuff for us! And of course we'll be perceived to be rude for not attending family functions over Christmas, and we'll be guilted for denying Tammy the opportunity to open huge piles of presents.

I realise this will be seen as one of my more controversial rants which no doubt will be taken far more personally by some than is intended, but this is just the way I feel. I hate Christmas and the culture that Christmas has become about. It's actually a depressing time and I would rather skip it all and disappear out into the wilderness, away from the madness! I doubt my absence would even be noticed.

But, that joy of fast forwarding past it all is not to be. No doubt my wife and I will have numerous more fights over what to buy for who and who is paying for what, then I'll get dragged miserably through Canal Walk a few times spending what precious little money I don't have on menial gifts to wrap, before we head off to mom's place for the usual Christmas Eve gift opening fiasco and then to Witsand for more of the same, the rest of the time at both spent on cooking, eating enormous volumes of food, and cleaning up. Then before you look again it's over, and we're fat and broke with bags of arb stuff to find place for in our cluttered homes and a fresh new gutter of debt to fill up.

Happy f***ng Christmas everybody!