Christmas is coming up.
People complain about how fake it has become – how it drips with consumerism, and yes, Christmas did lose some of its meaning over the years. Kids just know they get presents and don’t know why, but one aspect of Christmas has stood the test of time – family togetherness. Gross.
I love my family very much. My parents, my sister, my dog, my grandma, my cousins and aunts and uncles – I love them all. And I’d be 100 percent fine if Christmas was just limited to them, but it’s not. For some reason, Christmas Eve has now become a gathering of not only my immediate family, but also the step-relatives who most likely had all of their children out of wedlock.
An average Christmas Eve at my aunt’s house is as follows: The adults are binge drinking at the wet bar, setting good examples for their kids, and the kids older than 10 are even lucky enough to drink with their parents. The little ones are running around the Christmas tree screaming about getting screwed because of a lack of presents. The teenage girls are sitting around talking about how wasted they got last night and how many guys they had unsafe sex with, and the teenage guys are in a corner, passed out. Keep in mind, the room is so hazy with smoke, it is impossible to see 4 feet in front of you.
My sister and I make a deal with each other every year. Neither one of us will abandon the other person so we don’t have to weather the storm alone.
We walk into my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve shoulder to shoulder with faux smiles on our faces, gritting our teeth in dreaded anticipation.
We walk down the stairs and start hugging them, but I’m careful not to get too close because I don’t want to catch lice or Chlamydia.
The conversations I have with them are so hideously boring. “Houw’zz skool?” – remember, they are drunk – one will ask me, but here’s the deal: they don’t really care, and I really don’t want to waste my time talking to them. They just want to get back to the free Crown Royal or Grey Goose.
Finally, after two hours of sheer misery when the children born out of wedlock start to open their gifts, we sneak out the back door, get in our car and speed away.
Nothing celebrates the birth of Jesus like getting wasted, talking about unsafe sex and setting pristine examples for young ones by being drunk.
It’s all just so unutterably pointless, and I know other families have similar yearly experiences, too.
Sure, I don’t mind the commercialism of Christmas, but it sure as heck does not need to be used as an excuse to indulge in unsavory vices.
That’s just missing the whole point entirely.
It’s like saying, “Glad you were born, Jesus. I’ll do a keg stand to celebrate you.”