holiday busyness

I am well-documented in expressing my distaste for all of the responsibilities that come with the holidays. It is supposed to be a joyous time of year, but you have to jump through fifteen different hoops just to have done things right for the holidays. Christmas cards, decorations, gifts are all stresses more than they are things to bring families closer together or emphasize the importance of Christ, which are what the focus of holiday time should be anyway.

I remember really looking forward to Christmas as a kid, but the reasoning for that was pretty sound. It was one of my best opportunities to get toys and games, I got time off school, and I usually got the opportunity to play with cousins. I had no real responsibilities with the holiday, so the adults got to deal with all of the stress.

I have a theory that twenty percent of those who celebrate Christmas are holding the other eighty percent hostage. I think that twenty percent of people are so into the holidays that they are the ones listening to carols all year and putting up huge Christmas displays in their yards the day after Thanksgiving. They are the ones who put hours into creating their Christmas cards and send them to everyone they ever met. They are also the ones who figured out the popular gifts for the year in August and had them purchased before the rush (probably not as relevant this year, but you get the picture). I think that this twenty percent of people for whom this is a hobby rather than a responsibility sets the bar for the other eighty percent of the population.

To the eighty percent of the Christmas-celebrating population I say, "Enough!" Rather than describing people who would prefer to spend time home with their families watching TV or playing games than in a chaotic mall or holed up in the back room writing Christmas cards as apathetic Scrooges, we should aspire to be more like them. Of course, I say that as an apathetic Scrooge.