Day Forty-Nine: Six things that suck about Christmas

I can’t imagine that I’m the only person who looked at the calendar today and thought, “Oh shit, it’s a week ’til Christmas!” The holiday season isn’t exactly the most relaxing time of year (unless you’re smart like my family, and you escape it all to go on an actual holiday). I can certainly see the good side of Christmas–giving, eating, spending time with loved ones–but there are just as many parts that make me want to… well, you can read for yourself:

 

What it is: Christmas shopping.

What it feels like: Supervising a candy convention for toddlers.

What it makes me want to do: Assume the foetal position in the centre of Target and hope that everything just sorts itself out.

What I would rather do: Give my friends and family each a $50 budget (and they can do the same for me) to spend on whatever they actually want. They can even wrap it and write that it’s from me if they can’t let go of the whole ‘opening presents on Christmas day’ thing. Essentially we’d just be buying ourselves an awesome present with our own money, instead of wasting it on buying a crap present for a friend. Genius.

 

What it is: Listening to celebrity Christmas carols/albums.

What it feels like:  Every pop star in the world participating in a giant circle-jerk.

What it makes me want to do: Release an album of Easter-specific songs and see how they like it.

What I would rather do: Hear a few carols sung live by a decent choir. Also, get the word out that warbling on each note for five seconds and increasing the length of Silent Night to 14 minutes is a total dick move.

 

What it is: Putting up a Christmas tree and lights.

What it feels like: Somebody found a way to knot 65 Rubik’s cubes together and threw them in some boxes in the garage.

What it makes me want to do: Bury the items in the yard, and feign confusion when I can’t find them later.

What I would rather do: Print a picture of a tree (any tree) off the internet and put it on the fridge. Actually, that may create a tripping hazard in the kitchen, what with all the useless gifts that will no doubt appear under it. Perhaps I’ll stick it to the TV, to remind myself that Summer programming is not worth my time.

 

What it is: Reading thinly-veiled Facebook Christmas booty calls (All I want for Christmassss is youuuuuu! *wink*)

What it feels like: I’m reading an especially whingey entry in your diary.

What it makes me want to do: Steal someone’s loved one and mail them back piece by piece, beautifully wrapped. (That’s a joke, by the way. I’m terrible at wrapping presents.)

What I would rather do: See a whole bunch of posts between song-lyric-posters and their objects of desire that simply read, ‘DTF for xmas?’ So much less cryptic. If they’re embarrassed about airing their lust in a public forum–they shouldn’t be, given that they’re happy to post passive come-hithers to the greater internet–maybe they can try this thing called the phone. Or sexting. The kids are really into that.

 

Not sure if racist…

What it is: Being served a buffet of fruit mince pies and Christmas puddings.

What it feels like: “Here, eat this ancient dried fruit that I’ve stuffed into a brick.”

What it makes me want to do: Stick a fork down my throat ’til I spew, then excuse myself. Alternatively, take a single bite of a fruit mince pie, spew, then excuse myself.

What I would rather do: Gee, I don’t know. How about enjoy all of the fresh fruit that Queensland has to offer at this time of year? While we’re at it, let’s reconsider roasting up a turkey and vegetables in the 40 degree heat, and just stick to some cold meat and salad. It’s so untraditional to celebrate Christmas in a way that actually caters to your climate though, right?

 

What it is: Getting a photo with Santa (or watching some kid get a photo with Santa, given that I’m probably beyond my knee-sitting years).

What it feels like: Taking/forcing your small child to nestle into the lap of some dude you’ve never met. (Actually, that should be under ‘What it is’.)

What it makes me want to do: Call the cops and report a strange man in unusual garb inviting children to sit on his knee at the local shopping centre.

What I’d rather do: Not line up for an hour with parents and their shrieking angels only to have the kid in front baulk at the clearly terrifying huge bearded dude up on the throne and burst into tears–so his mother has to pluck him up and deliver him directly to the object of his terror for a gorgeous happy snap that they can send to all of their family and friends. Or, you know, just get one of the males in my family to dress up and take a pic on my phone. (I don’t have kids, by the way, but you just know I’m just going to nail the whole parenthood thing, don’t you?)

 

The best part about Christmas in my family is that our holiday is the present. There’s always the shopping to be done for the ‘in-laws’ and any friends who haven’t already received notice of my ‘let’s just not do this’ policy, but getting away for Christmas and focussing on the three Fs–family, food, and forcing my parents to wash and cook for me again–makes the whole thing a lot easier to deal with.

I’ll leave you with a lovely carol:

Haaaaaaaaaave yourseeeeeeeeelf a merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyy liiiiiiitle Christmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas…. (Track length: 24:15)

 

TB

Day Thirty-Five: The Christmas Upgrade (iPads for everyone!)

I shook this one and can hear the theme to Candy Crush…

 

It seems that when this time of year rolls around, I’m having the same conversation over and over with clients in my waiting room.

“Are you doing anything for Christmas?” they ask me.

“Yeah, just going up the coast. We do it every year. You?”

“Oh, we’re heading over to [insert amazing overseas destination here] for a few weeks.”

 

Now, I think that heading to the coast and having two full weeks of eating, sleeping, walking, shopping, swimming, playing, and eating (did I mention eating?) is the definition of awesome holidays, and I would have thought the same when I was a kid. But these people (and their lucky children) are basically taking a dump on my plans from a great height (roughly 40 thousand feet).

I had my first overseas trip when I was 15. I was the first one in my family who’d ventured beyond the seas by which we’re girt (Australia, if that’s too vague), and it was a pretty impressive feat. It was a school trip, though. I have never travelled overseas with my family. The furthest we’ve ever been as a group is Adelaide (from Brisbane). I’m sure the sudden increase in kids having more stamps on their passports than years on this planet is not because people today have more money–and if they do, they should be more time-poor or something, right? I get that airfares have dropped, and low-cost seats for the whole clan can be achieveable (if not affordable). But are we choosing grand overseas adventures over interstate roadtrips because we can afford it, or because it would be seen as remiss of a parent not to give their child such an amazing opportunity (depending on where they’re going, I suppose–I’ve heard that kids love North Korea)?

All this foreign gallavanting though is really just the start of the Christmas Upgrade. The other conversation I have on a daily basis goes something like this:

Me: So, Kasey, what are you asking Santa for this year? A Ferrari?

Kasey’s mother: (laughs) Oh, no, nothing fancy. Probably just a new iPod touch.

Kasey: I got one last year, but I broke it.

Me: Um, cool.

 

Did I mention that ‘Kasey’ is six? I don’t even have an iPod Touch, and my parents would probably tell me to go to hell if I asked for one for Christmas. (To be fair, I am 23, and we don’t do presents anymore.) At the beginning of this year, three siblings aged six, nine, and eleven proudly showed off their iPads. That’s iPads, plural. One each.

“Wow, that was a costly Christmas,” I said to their parents.

“Well, we couldn’t just get one, could we? There’d be fights,” their father replied, rolling his eyes.

 

The only thing I can think of is that iPads/Pods are the modern-day equivalent of a GameBoy (if you just forget the fact that GameBoys are still in circulation). For my brother and me, our enormous, black-and-white-screened bricks in stylish yellow and red were probably the most lavish gifts we’ve received to date. At the time, I’m guessing they set our parents back over 100 bucks each. Allowing for inflation, though, it’s still not anywhere remotely near to a freaking iPad. Again, I don’t have an iPad. I don’t even have a laptop that was made this side of the decade.

So, here’s a list of “expensive” Christmas presents that I wanted when I was a kid:

 

These things were the shit. Furbies came out when I was about eight or nine (Wikipedia says they launched in 1998). From memory, they were about 80 bucks a pop. My two brothers and I each got one, so that’s a cool 240 big ones right there. A 16GB iPod Touch is at least 249. Yes, yes, inflation, I know. But still. Kids of today are raking it in.

 

This little gem was my first mp3 player. Before you ask: yes, iPods had been invented. Did my parents feel it necessary to pay upwards of 500 bucks to equip me with 1000 songs? No, sir. This baby held a much more modest 15… if I was lucky and the songs were of average length. Seriously, listen to 15 songs in a row and tell me how long it takes. Then do it over and over again because you don’t have convenient access to a computer. God, I hated Avril Lavigne after that summer. My brother did eventually get a first generation iPod, but I have a feeling that he had to save up and pay for half of it himself.

 

Oh, man, was I ever stoked to find one of these under the tree. Again, I think we were looking at a price tag of around $80, but hey, she eats and craps, so it’s worth it, right? From what I’ve seen, dolls haven’t really got all that much more complicated since this innovation in mess-creation. But who needs the hassle of a real doll when you can just load yourself a virtual infant on your iPad? I’m sure many new parents are wishing they’d chosen a similar option.

 

This blurry masterpiece was our first flat-screen TV (not this actual one pictured, but I thought the quality was pretty accurate). It was the most exciting thing ever to happen to anyone ever when we woke up to find this monolith half-wrapped under the tree. (Half-wrapped because it was large, not because my parents are useless–although Dad did sample a little too much Cognac that year, much to Mum’s chagrin.) This one was probably a good 1000 smackers (or more, I don’t even know), but it was the present for all four of us. These days, I’m sure they’re getting one each, walled-mounted in their bedrooms, so that they can lounge on their queen beds and watch Dora without bothering their parents/siblings.

 

I shouldn’t really complain so hard. These days, we get a pretty sweet deal at Christmas. I get to move back in with my parents, but in an awesome apartment on the coast, and let them cook, wash, and just generally put up with me for two weeks. What shiny electronic device could top that?

 

TB

 

P.S. While I’m thinking about it, I remember pulling my Furby out a couple of years after it’s glory days, and it kind of reminded me of this:

Wuuuuuuuuv!