I.Just.Can’t.Do.It.
The boyfriend and I agree that we have too much stuff. We don’t need or want any more. At best, conspicuous consumption makes me uncomfortable. At worst, I find it repellant, a symptom of everything that’s wrong with society. You really don’t want to get me started on this subject.
Over the years, I’ve fashioned my own version of the holidays, culling customs that aren’t meaningful to me and establishing traditions that are. Some years have been lean, and some years we’ve spent too much—although our idea of excess is modest by most standards.
This year, I find my time and energy stretched thin, and I’m reevaluating how I want to spend what remains of 2013. When I was a kid, I thought adults could do whatever they wanted. As an actual adult, I’ve learned that I can’t do whatever I want—except when I can. When it comes to the holidays, no one else is the boss of me.
The Card
I like picking out our card each year. I always choose something that says Peace, figuring it’s the one time of year no one will argue with the sentiment. The more right-leaning card recipients assume that peace, in the words of Hank Hill, refers to “Jesus peace, not hippie peace.” To my mind, they’re the same thing, so sending a peace card is my own little act of subversion. I don’t care whether the rest of the card says Happy Holidays/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas, Have a Swingin’ Solstice, or In Acknowledgement of HumanLight. If you want to know the actual reason for the season, check an astronomy site. If you want to piss me off, natter on about the “war on Christmas.” Let me tell you: This isn’t a war. War leaves people homeless, displaced, starving, injured, and dead. I’m wishing you peace, no matter what you celebrate.
The Cookies
Last year was our first Christmas in our new neighborhood. I celebrated our first Christmas in our previous neighborhood by giving cookies to our favorite neighbors—who graciously reciprocated—and that, my friends, is how a dangerous precedent is established. So, last year I announced that in the new ’hood, there would be no cookie exchange. I still had to consider the Recipients of Cookies Past—but this year, I’m trying to think of a way to ditch them, too.
The Tree
Most years, we’ve put up a Christmas tree. A few times, we’ve elected not to. Last year, it was touch-and-go, until I finally succumbed to the same should that mandates that I should wrap presents (I’m getting to that), and up the tree went. This year, I’m not so wishy-washy. No tree. I.Cannot.Do.It.
The Gifts
I’ve shopped locally, I’ve ordered online, I’ve used catalogues, I’ve considered what individual recipients would most enjoy, and I’ve wrapped presents and boxed them for shipping and taken them to the post office or the UPS store or wherever the hell I need to take them in order to send them on their merry way.
On occasion, I’ve had a gift shipped directly from the retailer to the recipient, although this always feels like cheating because there’s a should involved. Some companies offer giftwrapping for some items, but even so, I should have had the item sent to me, wrapped it myself, and then boxed it for shipping to its true recipient. I don’t know why I should, but I should. This is a particularly masochistic outlook because I detest wrapping presents. I’m the person who uses gift bags stuffed with an abundance of tissue paper to make up for the fact that the gift is in a bag and not properly wrapped. How lazy can I be?
Well, I’ll tell you. This year, it’s all beyond me. I haven’t yet picked out my hippie Jesus peace card—and because I am drawing a complete blank for gift ideas for every single person to whom I normally give a gift, and because I cannot go through the boxing and hauling and shipping—I.Cannot.Do.It.—I am sending gift cards to everyone. That’s how lazy I can be, and apparently, that’s how lazy I am. Don’t bother to suggest that I make donations to people’s favorite causes. I’ve done that, too, and it met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Not everyone thinks they have too much stuff.
As a cousin of mine says, “I’d love to, but I really don’t want to.” I know exactly what he means: Some things sound great in theory—Decorate the house! Bake cookies! Have dinner with friends!—but in practice, the tree stays up too long because the only thing more tedious than decorating it is undecorating it, the cookies cost a fortune in ingredients and time, and icy roads and below-freezing temperatures make dinner with friends something that is just not going to happen, no matter how much I smile and say, “Yeah, that sounds like fun, it’s been forever, we really should.”
With full understanding of how unattractive a quality selfishness is, I can still choose to be selfish with my time and energy. I can choose to take the easy way out, tucking gift cards inside my hippie Jesus peace cards.
I’m making that choice.
Peace out.