CF Reason #4543: holiday season bullshit

I do somewhat miss doing stuff with my family for X-mess since I haven't been able to for going on 10 years. My mother refuses to interact with her family in any way and also won't let me do so either. There are no more little kids in the family that I know of, so I never really had to deal with brats. It's not even so much that I like Gift-mess, but just miss talking to my relatives. Instead I get to spend X-mess with my mother and, this year, most likely also her idiot "friend" that bitches about everything. I still gotta figure out what to get for her ass. I mean she'll say don't get her anything, but I usually at least get her a movie or make her some bullshit craft thing. She'll buy the idiot a present and put "From: Cambion" on the box, so I don't have to shop for him.

Black Friday is never really busy in my area, but I made out like a bandit at the comic shop I went to Friday. I got about $43 worth of comics for $16. My poor PayPal account is getting sucked dry, and as soon as I get a new camera, I'm gonna have to start selling shit again. Fucking eBay insists that item photos be a certain size and my Nintendo DS camera doesn't take very high quality pictures.

I'd be perfectly fine with "the holidays" if they only happened every 4 years or so. But every single year? It's too much, especially the consumer-driven aspect. The constant ads and forced "Christmas cheer" are too much. Now we're seeing Christmas themes before Halloween and "Black Thursday" sales the day of Thanksgiving. Disgusting. Then it suddenly comes to a screeching halt the day after Xmas. As much as I hate the season, it's kind of a let-down in a weird way.

I just hate the sentimentality of it all. People generally get weird when the weather is cold and they're stuck inside with nothing to focus on. That's my theory.

OMG the holiday tunes in the stores when I am NOT shopping for christmas. Today they were driving me nuts. I really don't like the music of the season until maybe 2 weeks before Christmas... and then... it suddenly ends the day after. YOu 'd think that if they can play it starting the first week of November that maybe they could kind of fade it out between Christmas and new years. Have you noticed that Christmas trees seem to look kind of blah the day after Christmas also? All I can think of by that time is that I have to put it all away. This year, I am getting very little of it out.

Some seasonal differences can be nice. Lights, music, special foods which are only available at this time of year, and so on.

But in an attempt to commercialize the crap out of it, these things have been creeping earlier and earlier into the year. We had lebkuchen in the shops in August! Yes, some of this stuff is tasty and when I was a kid I used to crave more of the things that were only available in December, but it was not having these things the rest of the year that made them so special. I can resist buying them until the season and do, but the pleasure is diminished by seeing them in the shops for months in advance.

The opinion nowadays seems to be that happiness lies in getting everything you want, which couldn't be further from the truth. Piles of Christmas gifts and wild spending just leads to people feeling jaded. Next year, even more is needed to create the same intensity, and eventually just getting things you want doesn't even bring pleasure. Getting things in limited doses and practicing self-restraint lets you appreciate the pleasurable feelings for much longer.