DONNNIE JOHNSTON: Bah-Humbug
Christmas works for some, just don't count Donnie among them. Shopping, vacations, Christmas movies, parades in the cold ... humbug. Let's fry eggs on the sidewalk in August and call it a holiday.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
Each year I try to get into the Christmas spirit, but usually I fail. I am just not a Christmas person.
As I have said many times before, I don’t like holidays – any holidays. I like life to go on at a steady pace. Most holidays I can just ignore. Christmas I can’t.
So, I just try to live through it, hoping, like with a case of the flu, it will eventually pass.
What is it about Christmas that I don’t like? Well, Santa, let me make a list.
First of all, as I said, I don’t like the disruption. It is hard to conduct business because everyone is off from work shopping for some useless gift they will give to their second cousin, once removed.
Just today I went into the bank to see an officer and was told that she was off Christmas shopping. Yes, I know everyone is entitled to a day off, but I think the whole bank was down at the mall because the only live person I saw was one lonely teller. Business needs to be transacted, no matter the season of the year.
I don’t like spending money for gifts that few people use or appreciate. I am not a shopper, and I don’t know what to buy, especially for adults. In our society everyone has what he wants and if he doesn’t have it, he just goes out and buys it.
Christmas giving has taken on the demeanor of tipping. It has changed from gratuity to a demand. You HAVE to give a gift at Christmas! It is not an option. And with kids the demand comes with a specific list.
I try to give during the year, when a need arises. I don’t wait for the holidays. But that is not an acceptable practice.
I know. Giving a Christmas gift is symbolism, as with the three wise men giving to the Christ child. But the three wise men were kings and had plenty of money. I am just a poor ignorant country boy trying to make it in the cold, cruel world, and I hate to part with my money just because society demands it.
Women have it easy when it comes to Christmas shopping. Men don’t care what you buy them. You could wrap up Aunt Martha’s cat and a man would just open it and move on.
Women can buy clothes for men. Gals know all about sizes and matching colors and all that stuff. Besides, they are born shoppers. Men cannot buy clothes for women. Lord knows, I have tried and failed miserably every time. I don’t know what gifts to buy for women.
Twice prior to writing this column I woke up in the middle of the night almost in a panic because I had no idea what to buy as Christmas gifts. I’m usually in complete shock by the time Christmas arrives.
This year I tried to get into the Christmas spirit by attending the annual Christmas parade. It didn’t help much. Decorated tow trucks and garbage trucks and immature 30-year-olds riding lighted four-wheelers isn’t very Christmassy, at least in my not-so-humble opinion.
Neither are fire trucks with lights blaring in your face and sirens scaring the little kids.
Christmas parades have become as commercial as television, with almost every entry trying to sell you some product or service. With TV you can at least be blasted with ads in the warmth of your living room. At the parade I about froze.
That brings up another point. We have two different views of Christmas, as is evident with Christmas cards (some people actually still send Christmas cards). There is the New England Christmas scene, a snow-covered rural village with a family in a horse-drawn sleigh in front of a clapboard church with a prominent steeple, and the religious card, with a manger scene or shepherds in the field on a hot summer night.
Which is it – hot or cold? I vote for hot. Let’s move Christmas to August, which is probably when Jesus was really born. After all, December was chosen simply to compete with pagan festivities of old.
August has no holidays, so celebrate Christmas that month. Spending money on gifts in August would be less painful than December. Real estate taxes are due in December. Between Christmas and the government, they bleed us dry in December!
Hey! Instead of roasting chestnuts on an open fire, we can fry eggs on the sidewalk. Works for me.
I watched Christmas in Connecticut the other night. It is probably my favorite holiday movie. I don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life. Too sentimental, as far in one direction as Ernest Saves Christmas is in the other. And I’m tired of A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation.
To tell you the truth, I’m becoming more and more fond of the Grinch and I’m beginning to think that Scrooge pretty well pegged it. Bah! This is a bunch of humbug!
Gotta go now. Christmas shopping and all that stuff, you know.
Have I got you in the holiday mood yet?
Well, you gotta admit, I tried.
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My sentiments exactly.