What irks me about the holidays

[CellarDweller]

ya know, I may have to take a trip out with my digicam, and post some tacky pics up for y'all.

[Ellemeno]

Here in Seattle, I'm pretty lucky - if I avoid downtown (which I do), and don't listen to commercial radio (which I can pass on very easily), and stay out of stores (which, I'm happy to say, is also pretty easy to do except for brief forays), I don't have to get assaulted by Xmas much at all.  Like some of the rest of you, I enjoy seeing how people decorate their houses as I drive by, and I like all those little white lights, so it's pretty tame here.

[Dobie1018]

I don't like how early the Christmas season is pushed upon us.  Here in Florida at least, the new Christmas ornaments come out in the card stores on July 1st of each year, and little by little over the months leading up to Christmas, Christmasy things start showing up in the card stores and other stores, so that by the time Christmas Day rolls around, everyone is so sick of it, they want it to be totally over and done with by December 26.  On that day, you see Christmas trees tossed out by the road, and Christmas lights turned off until next year.  When we were kids, we didn't even see anything having to do with Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.  We'd put up our Christmas tree up and sent out our Christmas cards a week or two before Christmas, and we would leave our tree up and our Christmas lights up until mid January.  After all, we didn't feel back then that the holiday season ended on December 26, and it really doesn't.  Too bad it's gotten so commerical.   

[Jeff Wrangler]

Is it just me, or are the TV commercials more obnoxious this year?

There's that Target Lady, returned from last year, I think. And the Honda commercial. And the people singing carol parodies to get you out of the mall and into T.J. Maxx and a couple of other stores I can't remember at the moment. And that little--whatever it is--for H.H. Gregg. ...

Oh, and here in Pennsylvania we have Gus the Groundhog hawking state lottery tickets to the tune of "Jiingle Bells."

Bah! Humbug! 

[louisev]

I don't find the commercials obnoxious at all, Jeff.

I don't own a television!  yay!!!

I can't tell you how happy I am as time goes on, that I don't have television and I don't want one!

[Jeff Wrangler]

I don't find the commercials obnoxious at all, Jeff.

I don't own a television!  yay!!!

I can't tell you how happy I am as time goes on, that I don't have television and I don't want one!

Not me. Too many shows with too many hot guys to see. I wouldn't want to miss that. 

[Marge_Innavera]

What's gotten very obnoxious to me about Christmas (or Solstice, Hannukah, and made-up holidays like Festivus) is the endless sermonizing about materialism, especially by our esteemed ( ) clergy.  Not the words or ideas themselves, but the fact that they are compartmentalized enough to be as season-specific as Santa Claus and poinsettas.

For roughly 46 weekends out of the year, if you could get a complete list of all the sermons, homilies, lessons preached around the US especially, it would be interesting to see how many are about materialism, the morphing of citizens into "consumers" and its corrosive effect on just about every aspect of life you could name.  And then compare that number to the number preached about abortion, homosexuality, the duties of wives to "submit" to their husbands, the moral imperatives of donating to the Building Fund and how God might want the faithful to vote on certain issues on some Tuesday in the near future.  The ratio would be a very large one.

The day after Thanksgiving, the official disapproval of the winter holiday starts revving up and the seasonal concern with material goods and material wealth as a measure of worth gets pulled off the shelf, dusted off and sent into high gear.  But it all gets put back on the shelf on December 26th, to be pulled out and dusted off again next November.  And people wonder why all the winter holiday admonishments don't work.

[Marge_Innavera]

Is it just me, or are the TV commercials more obnoxious this year?

IMO there's a tie for the worst one this year.  One is the caroller who shows up at some luckless person's house to sing about how lousy that person's Christmas gifts were.  The other is the Sprint commercial about a guy with a perfectly look-able Christmas light display whose neighbor, with this weird psychotic facial expression ("why won't you look me in the eye?" the decorating neighbor asks) crosses the street to insult him, for no particular reason.

[Marge_Innavera]

I always make sure I spend some time driving around town at night, looking at the way people decorated their houses.

Usually each Saturday in Dec is some activity, family party, friend party.  Chirstmas Eve and Day is strictly immediate family.

I love doing that too.  There are two houses in our little town that get really decked out.  One is a white two-story house with a porch and picket fence, and they have masses of red and white lights (with a little green accent) at night and beautiful porch and yard decorations iin the daytime.  The other is a smaller, humbler house whose owner took an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to it: lights every color of the rainbow, elves, nativity figures, you name it and a stylized Christmas tree with chase lights.  Haven't decided which one I like best -- the first is so visually beautiful; the second just radiates energy and good humor.

I won't deny that Christmas is shoved down our throats, but we don't have to let it dominate everything, or ruin the way we spend the holidays.

It's easy to get carried away, but IMO more people would make changes if they really stopped to think about the fact that no one is obligated to do anything during the winter holiday.  And "changes" doesn't necessarily mean eating macaroni and cheese on Christmas Day or getting your kids socks and telling them to be grateful they're getting that.  It just means deciding what you want to do (and spend), and what's worth the work and expense and what isn't.  We did that several years ago when it occurred to me that Christmas was becoming a stress-filled chore.

More easily said than done of course, especially if you have kids.  But I do know people with kids who have revised their holiday routines and they've reported that they got a lot of flack the first year; the family was used to it after that.  I've also been told that it helps to involve family members when possible: someone who dearly wants to keep some tradition that you want to drop might be willing to assume responsibility for it.

We went out of town for big extended-family Christmases for many years, and started a mini-tradition that defused some of the tension that can build when family members who don't always have much in common spend several days in the same house.  On the day after Christmas, we would plan a day trip to some local attraction, something with a fairly wide appeal, and would issue a blanket invitation for anyone who wanted to accompany us.  It turned out to be a good way for people to get a break from each other without making anyone defensive.

[Front-Ranger]

Not me. Too many shows with too many hot guys to see. I wouldn't want to miss that. 

Jeff, there are hot guys on the ski slopes, at the grocery store, in the bars, and even running around on the streets. And you can even reach out and touch them because, they are real!!