I remember , as a child, playing over and over, the song of Oscar the grouch saying how much "I hate Christmas!"
Now I am an adult and I can't stress it enough.
I do hate Christmas.
I enjoy it if it doesn't involve any particular pressured family activity, having to live up to my sister's ideas and plans every year of how it should be. It's always the way she wants it.
After 15 years of never having birthday remembered or acknowledged, mother's day never a big "to-do", anniversaries not matter and Valentines virtually non-existent....to have them suddenly appear on my calendar....I could care less.
My senses have been dulled to these manditory holidays.... and if I could just avoid the malls enough, I wouldn't have to see all the decorations for Thanksgiving, for Easter, for mother's day and father's day......and all the rest....
Just seeing them all reminds me of the feeling of an old boyfriend walking into the room with an New beautiful girlfriend.
And people wonder why I don't like to shop.
My sister says, ."....Well, I love Christmas."
Of course she does...it adds to her "perfect" life of getting flowers and cards, and having the perfect wedding, perfect husband, and having perfect teeth,being the perfect host, and having the perfect job, and the perfect Mother in Law, being the perfect daughter and the perfect dream life.....and always having on hand, the perfect bandaid for everything that goes wrong.....so it can be all better.
Watching and listening to her side of life is like standing in a room where your ex-boyfriend walks in with something always better, always wonderful, always perfect, and she smiles with her perfect teeth while you fade into the paint on the walls. He shows off without realizing you're there. His eyes are stuck on the sight of her....and so are yours....because the new girlfriend is so perfect.
You watch them laugh, and kiss, and you wish sometimes you could pluck your eyes out!...or theirs!
She doesn't know what I've experienced for 15 years regarding holidays.
She has no clue of the things I never told her.
She Loves Christmas........ Then she can have it! It will be perfect anyway.....even without me.
.......Cuz she'll have a band-aid for that too.
I'm slightly Scroogie....
But I Love lights, and candles , wreaths covered in snow, Pointsettias, Nutcracker statues, Silver reindeer, and peppermint candies by the bowlfull.
I will go tobagganing, and hicking through the woods hanging birdseed bagels for the birds on big red ribbons........
No Santa here.....
Just Scroogie and her family....opening stockings and floating in the hot pools at Radium.
Just before Christmas, I will buy myself an Oor Wullie or a Broons book and a gift certificate for Second Cup....The things that dad knew I loved, more than him getting me my white roller skates or my a.m. transistor radio.
