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Yes, it's that time of year when people seem to consider it their God Given Duty to remind people that Christmas is on its way. As if you haven't yet seen the clues bloody everywhere you look.
Here's my recommendation for people trying so hard to keep up with the Christmas spirit: don't. Let it slide. Backpedal in your mind to mid-October, to the last day you enjoyed an entire day without a single reference to Christmas, Thanksgiving, Bonfire Night or Halloween. Think of that rip-roaring time you had last International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Play that meme going around of pretending you're a time traveller.
When it comes to gift giving for Christmas, tell everyone you know and love that you're giving out some sort of tokens, trinkets at most, to say thank you for all that they have done during the year. Then go and buy a sack of coal. I can't imagine anyone who has not ever been thoroughly pissed off and driven to distraction by even one's closest loved ones. So ... here's your lump of shitty anthracite because you've not just been bad. You've been execrable. Merry Christmas.
In case you haven't already noticed, I hate Christmas. I hate the overeating, the fakeness of trying to put on a happy grin when inside you're screaming "I don't want to get stuck in the house with Auntie bastard Mabel for two solid days again!" and the candy cane sugary coating over every bloody thing, everywhere you look. As if we haven't already had a reminder of how snow, frost and ice are not the friends of human beings or food crops.
So, how to cope with not giving a shit about Christmas. Some helpful ideas.
One. Train your bowels. Every time someone volunteers to gather the family around for a game of charades, suddenly develop the need to go to the toilet. Even if it's just to throw up, it will keep you there long enough for the novelty of playing charades to go away.
Two. Get your MP3/iPod/hifi ready. Play whatever music you like that doesn't have a Christmas theme to it. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is a good choice. Classical music has its merits, because while it may not be to everybody's tastes, Night On Bare Mountain or Mars, The Bringer of War can take your mind to places you'd really rather prefer to be at this sad, sorry, culture-starved time.
Three. Christmas is what porn stashes are for. Every time a bell rings, imagine somebody getting laid in a slush filled garbage strewn back street by some skanky ho, the nastier the better.
When somebody puts on Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," sing an alternate anthem. "Well, I wish I could drink petrol every day/I'd set my arse on fire and I'd fly off to Bombay ..."
A special service of alternate anthems will be provided by this blog in the runup, so keep tuned and add them to your songsheets when you go carol singing.
Four, make sure to include caganers in and among your Christmas decorations. Lots of them. Order them in from caganer.com, or if you are creative, make them yourself. Caganers are there for a reason. The reason being Christmas. Hating Christmas is reason enough.
Five ... and this is hardest on people who are probably most used to it ... tell people that you have developed an allergy to tryptophan. That's the turkey off the menu for a start. Go for a minimal diet. Pick exactly what, and how much, you want to eat, then ask for slightly less than that. Make yourself feel hungry on Christmas and Boxing Day. Hunger should be your companion on this day, and you'll be surprised how faithful a companion it can be because it'll keep you lean, hungry and sharp where everyone around you will be like a blunted blade - dull and fricking useless.
If you're used to your friends being as lean, hungry and sharp of wit as you are, you'll be shocked at the difference when that tryptophan torpor hits. You love them, but it's like one of those horror scenes when you're the only spy who realises the food your host has offered up has been drugged.
You can be lean, hungry and sharp at Christmas if you want to. For some of us, on the Left Hand Path, it's a compulsion that's hard to ignore. Some of us - well, I - choose not to ignore that compulsion, which is why each Christmas is such hell for me - either from the event itself, or from all manner of ignorant buffoon calling me a "grinch" or a "scrooge" for daring to admit in public how little I care for the trappings of Yuletide excess.
Christmas, you see, is a an excrescence, an intrusion, an unnecessary waste of resources ... for me. I don't care about how everybody else wants to live their lives over this period. It's just that this is not a time that I, personally, want or need to celebrate.
I just felt the need to put this out now, before Mercury goes retrograde for the last time this year. This way, there is no chance of confusion or miscommunication.
Also, I couldn't sleep.
Here's my recommendation for people trying so hard to keep up with the Christmas spirit: don't. Let it slide. Backpedal in your mind to mid-October, to the last day you enjoyed an entire day without a single reference to Christmas, Thanksgiving, Bonfire Night or Halloween. Think of that rip-roaring time you had last International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Play that meme going around of pretending you're a time traveller.
When it comes to gift giving for Christmas, tell everyone you know and love that you're giving out some sort of tokens, trinkets at most, to say thank you for all that they have done during the year. Then go and buy a sack of coal. I can't imagine anyone who has not ever been thoroughly pissed off and driven to distraction by even one's closest loved ones. So ... here's your lump of shitty anthracite because you've not just been bad. You've been execrable. Merry Christmas.
In case you haven't already noticed, I hate Christmas. I hate the overeating, the fakeness of trying to put on a happy grin when inside you're screaming "I don't want to get stuck in the house with Auntie bastard Mabel for two solid days again!" and the candy cane sugary coating over every bloody thing, everywhere you look. As if we haven't already had a reminder of how snow, frost and ice are not the friends of human beings or food crops.
So, how to cope with not giving a shit about Christmas. Some helpful ideas.
One. Train your bowels. Every time someone volunteers to gather the family around for a game of charades, suddenly develop the need to go to the toilet. Even if it's just to throw up, it will keep you there long enough for the novelty of playing charades to go away.
Two. Get your MP3/iPod/hifi ready. Play whatever music you like that doesn't have a Christmas theme to it. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is a good choice. Classical music has its merits, because while it may not be to everybody's tastes, Night On Bare Mountain or Mars, The Bringer of War can take your mind to places you'd really rather prefer to be at this sad, sorry, culture-starved time.
Three. Christmas is what porn stashes are for. Every time a bell rings, imagine somebody getting laid in a slush filled garbage strewn back street by some skanky ho, the nastier the better.
When somebody puts on Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," sing an alternate anthem. "Well, I wish I could drink petrol every day/I'd set my arse on fire and I'd fly off to Bombay ..."
A special service of alternate anthems will be provided by this blog in the runup, so keep tuned and add them to your songsheets when you go carol singing.
Four, make sure to include caganers in and among your Christmas decorations. Lots of them. Order them in from caganer.com, or if you are creative, make them yourself. Caganers are there for a reason. The reason being Christmas. Hating Christmas is reason enough.
Five ... and this is hardest on people who are probably most used to it ... tell people that you have developed an allergy to tryptophan. That's the turkey off the menu for a start. Go for a minimal diet. Pick exactly what, and how much, you want to eat, then ask for slightly less than that. Make yourself feel hungry on Christmas and Boxing Day. Hunger should be your companion on this day, and you'll be surprised how faithful a companion it can be because it'll keep you lean, hungry and sharp where everyone around you will be like a blunted blade - dull and fricking useless.
If you're used to your friends being as lean, hungry and sharp of wit as you are, you'll be shocked at the difference when that tryptophan torpor hits. You love them, but it's like one of those horror scenes when you're the only spy who realises the food your host has offered up has been drugged.
You can be lean, hungry and sharp at Christmas if you want to. For some of us, on the Left Hand Path, it's a compulsion that's hard to ignore. Some of us - well, I - choose not to ignore that compulsion, which is why each Christmas is such hell for me - either from the event itself, or from all manner of ignorant buffoon calling me a "grinch" or a "scrooge" for daring to admit in public how little I care for the trappings of Yuletide excess.
Christmas, you see, is a an excrescence, an intrusion, an unnecessary waste of resources ... for me. I don't care about how everybody else wants to live their lives over this period. It's just that this is not a time that I, personally, want or need to celebrate.
I just felt the need to put this out now, before Mercury goes retrograde for the last time this year. This way, there is no chance of confusion or miscommunication.
Also, I couldn't sleep.
