We are now fully launched into the month of December, which means it is ‘way past time to torment you with a Christmas column. 

 

Why would I want to torment you? Well, because being tormented is pretty much part of the Christmas way of life now. Things have changed, nobody has a middle view about anything anymore, and somewhere along the way, when nobody was looking, Old-Fashioned Let’s-Just-Have-Fun Christmas became Polarized I’m-Offended Christmas. 

 

Maybe you’re tormented by the massive over-commercialization of the season, or maybe you’re tormented by the people who are tormented. Maybe you just hate the word ‘commercialization’ because you know you will hear it at least 1,000,000,000 times between now and the end of the year.

 

Maybe you’re more offended that the ‘reason for the season’ is no longer what you think it should be. Or maybe you think the season is just that, a season, no reason. Both sides of that controversy will be argued at length throughout the month. This will happen even though the arguments have been made every year for a very long time, and so far not one soul has been convinced to change their way of doing Christmas. And this fixation on ‘what is Christmas’ will extend, as usual, to the naming of the season. Is it Christmas? Or is it the Holiday Season? Or, for that matter, is it live or is it Memorex? “Merry Season, people!”

 

And even if you’re not easily offended, you’ll be easily overwhelmed by the number of choices you’ll soon need to make. The choices usually start with a shortbread cookie.

 

The cookie is sitting beside you. There’s only one, because you’ve already eaten the other 19. In your disgust over a) yourself for eating those other 19 cookies, b) the offensive commercialization of Christmas, or c) the weather, you reach, like a drowning man, for the 20th. Do you eat that cookie which perfectly foreshadows your eating habits for the entire month? Yes. You do. And then you curse the party-poopers in the world who abstain from such things at Christmas for no good reason other than they have more will-power than you do. 

 

You can burn off about .001% of those calories with Christmas shopping. At this point, cranky, and feeling guilty and bloated, you can vilify the stores for decorating far too early. Soon, though, you’ll need to be figuring out when to put up your own decorations. When do they go up? When do they come down? Wait, where are they?

 

What about the tree? Live tree? Fake tree? Cut tree? Designer tree? Little tree? Big tree? Bushy tree? Sparse tree? No tree? Green tree? White tree? Pink tree? Charlie Brown tree? Head out to the woods and cut one down? Go to a Christmas tree farm? Or just grab the first one you see at the grocery store while you’re there buying Aspirin for the seasonal headache you’re developing? Then what? Canned snow with tinsel and a wild assortment of child-made ornaments? Or tastefully coloured crystal ornaments paired with the colours of your decor?

 

Now something has to go under that tree. How many? Homemade? Store-bought? Amount to spend? Who is on the list? Is Santa part of the gig? If he is, what does he bring? If he’s not, will you have enough room on your offensitivity calendar to be offended at people who still stick by him despite your lectures about lying to kids?

 

What about the outside of your home? Are you going with tens of thousands of lights that blink to the tune of Wizards of Winter? Or an uneven and ratty string of semi-working lights that only blink because the wires are frayed? Or do you make like Scrooge and say “bah” to lights?

 

Wait, don’t think you’re done. Don’t forget your Christmas cards. Should you send to the ones who sent to you last year and who won’t send to you this year because you didn’t send last year? Do you write one of those ‘we sure are successful and beautiful’ Christmas letters? Or write a parody of the same? Or do you put off sending cards until they go on sale in January, at which point they actually arrive early, not late? Or do you decide not to send anything at all because you are ‘environmentally aware’ (read: really lazy)?

 

With so many decisions to make and so many offenses to irk you, it can be pretty tough maintaining your ’Christmas Spirit’ throughout the season. The Christmas Spirit is something you either have or don’t have, and if you don’t have it you’ll be annoyed by people who do have it who will be annoyed at you for not having it which will annoy you even more. The Christmas Spirit has been around a long time, but it used to be shorter-lived and more durable in the face of problems. People would fire it up a couple of weeks before the 25th and voila! it’d run like a dream until around the time they had to go back to work, at which point it would crash catastrophically. These days, it is more of a delicate flower-like emotion, and must constantly be nurtured and shielded from the ravages of the above described conflicts and stresses. And even regular watering with wine or beer will not keep the thing alive for an entire month. By December 28th or so, most Christmas Spirits are pretty much “Ho ho ***ity ho”.

 

There is one fix for North Polarization and stalled Christmas Spirits, although it’s only a temporary fix at best: decorate the dog or cat. I guarantee that they will show you the true Face of Christmas. And then they will bite you.