Wait Your $%#@#^ Turn!

Before I get called a Scrooge, let me get it out of the way early. I hate Christmas. Not just feel uneasy about it. HATE it with a passion usually only reserved for Phil Collins tunes on my radio. I hate having to shell out money to give presents to people I don't like, I hate my television being filled with endless shows featuring some dude with a beard who likes to hang out with midgets (once you've seen The Grinch, they're all pale comparisons anyhow), I hate the increased traffic on the roads, I hate watching news stories about old people giving each other concussions over the last Pull My Finger Elmo, I hate Christmas trees, Christmas lights, and Christmas carols, I hate the fundamentalists all trying to "save" me by telling me the "reason for the season". But most of all, above any of the things listed already, I hate the fact that stores and advertisers insist on pushing the "Christmas rollout" campaigns back further and further each year until Santa is on the television riding around on an electric razor while the kids are still out for summer break.

STOP IT! Stopitstopitstopit! Christmas already has an entire month dedicated to it. Stop pushing into other holidays months. I want to see ghosts and ghouls in October, not jolly men in red suits. The only appearance of Santa during the month of October should be in the slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night and all its 134 sequels. I love halloween and I can't enjoy it anymore because Costco has jingle freakin' bells playing while I'm trying to get my groceries...

It's very simple. God, in his infinite wisdom, has granted us a means to tell when Christmas has begun. In the beginning, God created the Macy's parade and it was good (especially the Snoopy balloon...). And lo, the Lord said "let there be Santa at the end" and there was and it was to be the beginning of Christmas. I think that's in Leviticus. No one ever reads Leviticus so that's bound to be where it's at.

Santa comes down the street on Thanksgiving day, you can put up your tree and your airport runway lights with my blessing. You can drag out the decorations, put on a copy of Miracle on 34th Street (the original black and white only please) and sing "Grandma Got Runned Over By a Reindeer" to your heart's content. Before then, bugger off.

Let the rest of us enjoy our holidays as they come.

Bah. Humbug. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some presents to steal from those nasty Whos from Whoville...


Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
-Tom Lehrer

NP: Nightmare Before Christmas: Original Soundtrack