Why holidays, generally, suck

I am, in general, a Grinch.

I've been asked about this a lot - why I don't particularly enjoy the holiday season, why my response to a lot of the hooplah surrounding holidays is "Bah! Humbug!", and why I tend to get a bit cranky around the holidays. It's hard to explain.

I guess for some people, the holiday season starting around Labor Day kicks off a time of fellowship, getting together with family, enjoying fall-time parties, and whatnot. I don't associate the "holiday season" with most of that. I'm not denying it's there, and I enjoy it as much as the next guy when it crosses my path, but when I think of the holidays, that's not the first thing that comes to mind. I've been asked if something traumatic happened to me as a child at the holidays - no, my life doesn't parallel the middle of Gremlins, and I've never had somebody keel over dead over the Thanksgiving turkey. There was one particular incident when I was 18 that has stuck with me involving a 13 hour drive to visit relatives and being thrown out of the house the next morning, to spend another 13 hours driving on icy roads to get home at Christmas; maybe that incident has something to do with it. Who knows.

See, the thing is, holidays have all of this big build-up. I can understand it about Christmas/Hannukah, I suppose, since there is loot involved, but come on, do we really need to start seeing the displays for the stuff in October???? Anyway, the build-up nearly always means a letdown for somebody, and that's where I start having a problem. There's always somebody around with stars in their eyes about What It All Means, and that person nearly always gets their dreams utterly crushed at some point. I don't particularly enjoy watching that.

There are reliable studies that show a predictable and regular surge in crime rates in certain times of year, particularly around the holiday season - the studies I found are from the early 90's, but I doubt things are particularly different today. And that's just the stuff that comes to the attention of the police. Maybe that's just because human beings tend to be a violent lot, or maybe it's because we're genetically wired to off ourselves every so often, who knows. What I do know, though, is that families that get together have a tendency to fight either right before, right after, or during holiday get togethers. That one, immutable, unchanging fact turns me right off of all of it.

Don't get me wrong here - I absolutely love watching the kids opening presents on Christmas morning, and I love sitting down to a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving more than any other meal all year long. It's the insidious combination of false cheer (but you have to be happy, it's Christmas! makes no sense to me at all), spoken or unspoken expectations of the people around you (ie. comparisons of gifts....that is offensive to me on levels I can't begin to describe), and the commercialization of all of this desperate rush to glee that I despise to the depths of my soul.

Oh, and Christmas muzak. I don't like most Christmas music in general, but the muzak version of it is what they play in hell for the really bad sinners, I'm certain of it.