All I Want for Christmas Is For It To Be Over

When pelting me with refuse, aim for the head

I have a long list of things I abhor that other people love, and it probably doesn’t cast me in the best light: shopping (desperately boring), parties (hives), booze (rancid), eating (waste of time), sleeping (even bigger waste of time) … and Christmas.

Lord, how I hate Christmas.

But lately, it occurs to me that I may have to amend that. I’m too honest not to (begrudgingly) admit that my hatred of Christmas has lessened over the last seven years, which, coincidentally, are the same seven years I’ve been living in Italy.

Have I (horror!) gone soft in my old age?

Process of elimination says that I haven’t materially changed. I’m still the same curmudgeonly misanthrope that I’ve always been. But I no longer live in Houston, Texas, behind a mall that was so lit up during the holidays, I could see it with my eyes closed. I no longer commute to work on a ten-lane highway crowded with billboards reminding me that Target’s still open. I no longer pump gas with holiday ads blaring at me from tiny screens on gas dispensers. And I am no longer forced to behold two million dollar McMansions festooned with five thousand dollars’ worth of holiday finery put up by underpaid Mexican yard workers.

In other words, it’s not Christmas I hate (although, as a secular humanist in a Christian world, it’s always a little tough to swallow); it’s Christmas in America I hate, and I do so with the heat of a thousand fiery suns.

And that’s because, despite its various mewlings about “the reason for the season,” Christmas in America is a capitalist juggernaut based on an economic model of untrammeled, ruinous growth. It’s more, more, more, it’s in your face, and it’s all the time. There’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday and pre-Christmas sales and post-Christmas sales. You can stand in the canned vegetable aisle of your local supermarket and be bombarded by ads piped in over the loudspeaker. Your mailbox bulges with circulars, magazines that are 90% advertising, fliers announcing the Christmas miracle of steel-belted radials on sale down at Goodyear.

Every tree, every house, every building, is girded in holiday lights like a peculiar form of sexual bondage. The effect, while lovely, also feels a little sinister—the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel where the witch hides, rubbing her bony hands together in anticipatory glee.

In America, the holidays are so in your face, you can’t get away from them. Even in the sanctity of your own home, they find you. Click on the television, and there’s forty minutes of programming and twenty minutes of ads. Go on social media, and you have influencers brazenly hawking diet pills, face masks, teeth whiteners, and body shapers as a form of “entertainment.”

You don’t even know how intrusive, assaultive, mind-numbing, and terrifying all this Christmas stuff is until you leave the country. An extreme remedy, I know, but the only one that throws into bold relief how rapacious the consumerist beast has become.

Yes, I know you’re thinking, oh, Stacey, it’s just noise. I don’t let that kind of thing bother me. But that’s actually impossible. Of course, it bothers you. It gets to you in ways that are so insidious, you don’t always realize why these feelings of profound alienation are coming over you. You’re at Yankee Candle in the mall holding a thirty-dollar jar candle called “Christmas cookies,” and it’s everything you can do not to burst into tears. All that advertising is telling you to feel one way—up, happy, close to your family, ready to buy—and then when you don’t feel any of those things, there’s something wrong with you.

Look at that family on the television. They’re happy. Why can’t you be that way?

Everything I just said here goes double for single people, even happily single people. For many, the holidays are a nightmare of loneliness. Being invited to a friend’s house for Christmas dinner can make it worse: I’m here because everybody feels sorry for me. Every time someone innocently asks you what you’ve been up to, you go prickly because it feels as though you now have to account for whatever defect prevents you from forming lasting attachments, you sad, pathetic loser.

Couple, couple, couple, you.

That’s why the holidays feel like a form of emotional manipulation. You’re being held hostage, forced to participate in food rituals and gift rituals with people (many of whom you’re related to, can’t stand, and wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire) in excruciatingly close quarters. You’re supposed to want it, like it, and look forward to it. If you don’t, that’s obviously why you’re single.

In Europe, Christmas is tons more charming. Gone are most of the billboards frantically beseeching you to buy. 80% of Italians live in apartments, which automatically makes decorating a small-scale situation. Few Europeans have lawns, so there are no inflatable Santas, Grinches, Snowmen, or Nutcrackers. Most businesses are mom-and-pop shops, which means creativity takes the place of big decorating budgets.

John and I celebrate Christmas by not celebrating it. For us, it’s just another day. We don’t exchange gifts. We don’t put up a tree. One time, we drove to Rome and observed “Jewish Christmas” by eating in a Chinese restaurant.

God, how I loved that.

All this to say that if you are among the fortunate few that look forward to hanging out with their families, embrace capitalism, aren’t constrained by a small budget, and relish the holidays, you have my love. It pleases me to know you exist. Your life is aspirational.

But for all the rest of you Christmas critters, I give you this:

For those of you who have bigger hearts than wallets and go into ruinous debt each year buying things, don’t. There are other ways to show your love.

For those of you whose parents are divorced and remarried, and who feel obliged to bundle their kids into cars and then race all over hell’s half acre trying to visit each family in a desperate attempt to avoid hurt feelings and a possible World War III, stop.

For those of you who are single, far from home, lonely, depressed, and likely drinking too much, put down the bottle. There are other vices you could explore. Also, stay away from QVC.

For those of you who are forced to spend time with loud mouths, anti-vaxxers and Trumpers, I know the prevailing wisdom says to bite your tongue. Don’t. This Christmas, instead of regular gifts, give everyone the gift of your opinion instead. Come to the table armed with facts, sarcasm, and withering disdain. You hate these people anyway, so why does it matter?

Mostly, I just want all of my fellow cretins, misfits, misanthropists, and curmudgeons to know that I feel your pain. It’s not you; it’s them. You’re not imagining things. The entire system is designed to make you feel small, inadequate, an outcast. Capitalist Santa just wants your money. He doesn’t care how he gets it. He’ll hold you up by the heels just to shake a nickel out of your pocket.

This year, when someone asks you what you want for Christmas, tell the damn truth for once: “All I want for Christmas is for it to be over.”

Do you love Christmas? It’s okay! I want to hear from you. And if you hate Christmas? It takes courage to admit it. You can start by leaving your comments below.