That time of the year

I'm not much for Christmas. Being lazy, selfish and a poor present shopper generally combine to show everyone what a terrible person I can be at Christmas time. Everyone else (i.e. women) has found that halcyonic gift that the receiver always wanted, but never expected; that is useful, but also conveys deep emotions of how you feel towards one another. Meanwhile, I'll be wrapping up whatever crap was most effectively thrown in my face at some stage as I try to escape the masses of clueless idiots at the shopping centre. Five minutes in that car park is enough to drive me fucking mental.

Then there's also the fact that I really don't like hanging around with the extended family or my parents' friends. I barely see them and even when I did, I had very little to talk about. Christmas is so traditional that nothing seems to change. So I'll be treated like a child. It's actually quite demeaning. I've tried my best to distance myself, but you can't mess with Christmas. Just the word itself implies something bigger than anything else. In two nights, I'll go steal a car and shrug my shoulders and say "But it's Christmas!"

What I don't fully comprehend is the religious aspects of it all. It seems like we need enough religion to make Christmas have some kind of meaning, but so little of it so that nobody gets offended. Well here's a thought. Perhaps the commercial bastardisation and near-total hijacking of the second most important milestone in that big Bible book to replace it with a bunch of meaningless generic traditions slightly offends me! And I'm not particularly religious at all!

It's just that time of the year.