Disaster on 34th Street

            If you’re the type of person who re-reads Dickens, goes caroling, and un-ironically wears elf ears during the month of December, this column is not for you. However if you are like us and hate the holiday hustle and bustle and hoop-la of the season then please read on.

During the holidays it seems that everyone’s niceness is on high alert, their level of understanding and caring becomes so high that you want to believe it’s true.  I swear every time you walk in downtown Portland and bump into someone during the holidays they become the first to say “excuse me;” any other day this would be a rarity. 

           

            It seems during the holidays there’s always that one family member that never wants to talk to you.  In fact the thought of making eye contact with you makes their blood curdle. This is where that niceness rule doesn't apply. And your mom nags you all the time that you need to be nicer to them, all the while in your head you’re thinking there is no way I’m going to be the nice one. I mean really, it’s not your fault they hate you.

            

            Eating holiday dinners with your relatives can be more than uncomfortable but what is even more tension fraught is cooking for your family. There is the healthy green bean casserole that you try to make that turns out yellow and thick which your relatives enjoy, making it even more disgusting to you. Then there’s the gingerbread that you attempt, not once but twice, that comes out of the oven wet and soupy in the middle no matter how long you bake it. (This concoction was promptly enthusiastically disposed of in the trash.)

Then you have those people that put their Christmas lights up the second they move into their house and they never come down until they leave.  That means they’re up through every single holiday. It always makes me wonder whether their life is just really busy and they don’t have the time to take them down, or they’re just super lazy and don’t feel the need to take them down. Even worse are the people who leave out their pumpkins long after Halloween. (The sight of them rotting does little to bring out any neighborly affection.) You feel ashamed for even living next to them; in fact you almost want to go over there and do the neighborhood a favor by taking them down yourself. 

However, if you’re the one who leaves their lights up you should just get your act together and take them down yourself because it’s pretty tacky. The only time it would be appropriate to leave your lights up is if you lived in the back of the backwoods, even farther down the food chain than rednecks.  Now that’s saying something.

            Not that I've ever had carolers come to my door or anything, but just the thought of it makes me want to rip my hair out, because the constant loop of the same Christmas songs on the radio isn't enough, some people out in the world want to make your life worse by singing the same music you hate at your own house. The Christmas songs that you hate are always the ones that track you down throughout the holiday season.

            Have you ever noticed that there are only like five actual Christmas songs they just have different phrasing of the same melody. Let’s take “Jingle Bell Rock” for example. Artists (if the word applies to former Disney Channel stars) like Hilary Duff all the way to Kenny G (he plays the saxophone, I think) have done a version of that song. I’m sure if you wanted you could listen to only that song for the entirety of your winter break and you would never hear the same version twice.