The Twelve Annoyances of Christmas

Like everybody else, I enjoy the holiday season. I love surprising people with gifts, and like most people I certainly appreciate when people think highly enough about me to give me a present or two. (If anybody wants to be my super secret Santa, my Amazon wishlist can be accessed by using the Hudson@iw.net email account.) It’s also the one time of the year when most people that I have strong feelings for come back to town to visit for a few days. Yes, the “hermit” actually escapes from his southeastern fortress.
What should be no surprise to most regular visitors to this site, however, is the fact that there are a number of things that annoy me about this time of year. Although I realize that many people actually enjoy some of the exact same things that drive me to the Windsor bottle, I know I’m not alone in my complaints.
With that in mind, here are the 12 things I hate about the holiday season:

1. The annual (and silly) Winter Survival Kit story on KELO. Wow, it’s a good idea to carry blankets and a flashlight when traveling in the cold? Thanks for nothing.


2. Pre-emption of all of my favorite television shows by syrupy-sweet Christmas specials. The few shows that aren’t pre-empted always seem to be reruns. Hey, some of us don’t go out shopping and drinking every night!


3. The reappearance of Gloria Estefan on all of those awful holiday shows. We don’t have to deal with that twit for eleven months of the year, and then she’s on a dozen or so shows in a thirty day period. Hey, Gloria, that Latin music thing (thankfully) never really happened, and your career ended over a decade ago. Go back to Vegas, or wherever your lounge act appears the rest of the year.


4. The so-called War on Christmas. Stupid Bill O’Reilly created this false outrage last year to spur sagging ratings. His ideological-similar colleagues jumped on the bandwagon, despite no evidence to support it besides a few retailers greeting customers with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”.


5. Small-town traffic driving at small-town speeds clogging up our city streets. I hesitated to add this annoyance, as I certainly don’t need more little villages calling me names and/or threatening my life. But it does need to be said. If the speed limit is 35, you shouldn’t be driving 15.


6. Weekday newspapers overstuffed with advertising inserts. I’d pay an extra quarter if I could get an ad-free paper, as I really don’t care that Wal-Mart has holiday diapers on sale. The only insert I need is Sunday’s Best Buy ad – there’s another Married With Children box set coming soon and I can’t miss out on that!


7. The lack of December new releases. The record business basically shuts down the last month of the year, with the exception of a handful of awful hip/hop and American Idol albums. Hey, some of us do still have a need to buy stuff for ourselves.


8. Department stores that clog their entrances with the same terrible gift ideas that didn’t work last year or the year before. Does anybody really give Isotoner gloves as gifts? Attention Lewis Drug – I’d shop at your stores if you actually had some merchandise not geared to senior citizens.


9. Christmas music in general. 90% of it is all more syrupy than the worst Muzak, and stores tend to play their background music twice as loud as they do the rest of the year. Mariah Carey? Ugh. That acapella group from Minneapolis? Ugh. If somebody…anybody…would play anything from the excellent 10% (Pogues, Phil Spector, etc.), I would not complain. Until that happens, though, I’ll continue to wear Teagan or Jenna the Ipod whenever I shop.


10. Overenthusiastic store clerks. Unless you’re a beautiful babe between the ages of 21 and 35, leave me alone. I can navigate the shelves by myself. If I have questions, I’ll come to you. It should be pretty clear to the snot-nosed clems at Best Buy that I know how to browse through the CD’s.


11. The fake shocked look I get from people when I tell them I’m not putting up any Christmas decorations. When my kid was young, I participated. He’s not young anymore, and if he doesn’t care neither do I. What am I going to do, sit there and stare at my tree? (Although I must admit, my non-traditional decorations of Rolling Stones lights and Simpsons, Beatles, and Beavis and Butthead ornaments were pretty awesome.)


12. Finally, we hit my last complaint of the holiday season – the cold. As Cade and I discussed last week, why do we put up with it? Why don’t we move somewhere that doesn’t regularly dip into single digits and below? Is it the low crime rate and high standard of living? Or is it family and friends? Or could it possibly be that we’re just too lazy to make that move? It’s probably a combination of all of those factors, and despite my weekly rambling rants, I do enjoy living in this fine city of ours. I just need to find something or somebody to inspire me to look at things in a bit more positive light. I’ve asked before, but is there anybody out there willing to be my internet groupie?