Christmas bells are ringing - but not here

CHRISTMAS = BAH FUCKING HUMBUG.

{edit - wee hours of Christmas morning]

What is it about festive seasons that make you want to slit your wrists? The incessant playing of festive tunes sung by unfortunate orphans from disaster-riven Third World Countries everywhere you go is part of it What makes it even worse is that it's totally politically incorrect to put the hate on underprivileged orphans, and there's nothing worse than people who irritate you who you aren't allowed to get irritatated with. Pooh on that.

Why do we celebrate Christmas anyway? Jesus was born. And he was born so he could die for our sins and save all of humanity, and if that isn't a raw deal which makes it glad it wasn't me, I don't know what is. But the only reason Jesus had to die for us is because some woman gave into temptation and ate that damned apple (or so the Bible says). And even that it was a no win game, since God put that darn apple tree up knowing full well that Eve wouldn't be able to resist. If he wanted Eve to resist he would have made woman without curiosity, but noooooooo. Face it, God wanted Eve to fail. So what's Christmas? Christmas is a celebration of someone being born to be tortured and murdered for our sins all because some woman couldn't leave well enough alone thereby bringing down on us all original sin - basically an affirmation women suck ass and it was all their fault, thank God someone has come to save us, hallelujah. That's a great load of suck right there.

And the whole thing about Christmas is that it's one huge commercial venture, really. We are guilted by retailers into believing that 'tis the season for giving, and so give we do, digging into our pockets to buy presents for all and sundry even if we don't fucking want to, thus ensuring that the cash registers ring in sales all month. Yes, that's right, its not sleigh bells you hear, they don't fucking go ka-ching. I have bought presents for secretaries whose names I don't fucking know, and secretaries who's only contribution to my life was to fuck up my work so that I stayed even later than I normally do. Yes, that $50 could have been used to pay the utilities, but noooo instead it went to some overpriced Crabtree & Evelyn hamper. Since when did cookies cost a buck a piece anyway?

In addition to this I had, in the name of giving 'face', to purchase a present for two of my little cousins who appear to have been spawned from the loins of Satan. ('Little' may be a misnomer. One of them is roughly the size of a baleen whale.) Lest you think that I exaggerate. let me tell you how one of the Spawns of Satan violated my bathtub when he was of an age to know better. He vomited in it. COPIOUSLY. The bathtub is RIGHT NEXT TO THE TOILET. But apparently the thirty centimenters between my bathtub and the toilet was a life-or-death difference, and obviously the bathtub is a better receptacle for your half-digested dinner. In order to hide evidence of this heinous act, the little monster decides to upend half a bottle of my favourite shampoo into the bathtub and turn on the shower on full. Foam and chunks of unidentifiable food matter everywhere. Chunks of which sink to the catchment ring that you place over the open plughole in your tub. Now naturally, when I come home, exhausted and filthy from god knows what, NO ONE tells me about this when I go for my shower. So I discover that (a) half my shampoo is gone (b) the bathtub is full of foam and (c) the bathtub is clogged and water won't go down, and I'm standing ankle-deep in murky, foamy, bathwater. I don't realize anything is horribly wrong because, hello, you have to be some kind of sick twisted fuck in order to have your first thought be "Hey, I think someone threw up in my bathtub an just used my shampoo to try and cover the evidence" when the aforesaid circumstances are present. I ust thought the little bastard had poured away half my shampoo while taking a bath in my bathroom. So I finish my shower completely oblivious that I was wading in half-rinsed sick, and went downstairs, where the little fucker was acting innocent. "Did you use my shampoo?" I demanded, knowing full well he did.

"No!" he says, giving me big blinky eyes that look about as innocent as blood on his hands.

I tell someone about it. It was only then that I found out what had happened. Which required a return to a differemt shower and much swearing (and exfoliation).

Then a day later I find out that the little fucker didn't throw up in my bathtub. Noooooooo, that would have been too easy.

HE SHAT IN IT.

That's right. He dropped his pants and POOPED in my bathtub. And I took a bath and waded in chunks of things which I couldn't see because of all the foam, chunks which clogged up my bathtub and WHICH HAD PASSED THROUGH SOMEONE ELSE'S RECTUM.

This led to a rather tense conversation between my mother, the offender's mother, and a resulting cold spell between the two families for the better part of four months. Oh, and my legs being scrubbed so many times they practically bled.

But you know what? We still had to buy presents for him that year.

The whole rationale behind present giving is fucked up.

More people suicide around christmas than any other time of the year. There's so much pressure to have a merry fucking christmas that it really drives it home if you're not having one. I'll tell you what Christmas is all about.

Christmas is all about a million zillion poor turkeys who have lived their lives in conditions not much better than battery hens getting the chop even though we don't have a clue why the hell we have turkey every year.

Christmas is about having to give presents to people you really don't like even though this means you can't give presents to people you do.

Christmas means no one fully appreciating the full religious significance of the season and treating it as a excuse to capitalize on commercialism.

Christmas means yet another day of the year when someone making you cry on Christmas eve is a billion times worse because that just means you're not happy when you are supposed to be happy like the rest of the world, so ho fucking ho fucking ho.

Now excuse me because I think that Scrooge is at the door and he wants his fucking hat back.

[edit late Christmas night]

Okay, okay, okay, I got Your message.

Merry Christmas.