By Brian Broome
I can feel it now the way a buzzard can smell carrion from miles away. The dreaded season is here, even if the commercials started long ago. The ads feature beautiful people wearing violently colorful sweaters and pouring fine liquor into glistening glassware. The stores where I buy my meager Hungry-Man frozen dinners now explode with silver and red in a gaudy celebration of unchecked, poinsettia-riddled capitalism.
I hate Christmas.
We don’t speak up, us holiday haters. We tend to keep our feelings to ourselves. We endure the commercial breaks that remind us that “Every kiss begins with Kay" and watch as still more beautiful people are surprised by enormous red bows on top of expensive cars. We watch the advertisements for Hallmark movies in which some successful yet unhappy woman moves to a small town and discovers the “true meaning of Christmas” by meeting some working-class dude for whom she will upend her entire life
just because he gives her a snow globe.
But, this year, I’d like to be heard. Not everyone is down for all this glee.
I come from a Christian family, and I recognize the significance of the holiday. I know the backstory; as a child, in a church play, I turned in quite a nuanced performance as a camel. But I hated Christmas even then because my family didn’t have money. We got practical presents in the good years: A scarf, new mittens, socks and, of course, the dreaded underpants. Our holiday tree glowing bright in the middle of the living room was a beacon to disappointment.
I didn’t like Christmas in part because the steel mill where my father worked had closed. That news did nothing to stop the commercials with shiny, happy, children opening reams of colorful paper to reveal the things that they’d always wanted. The ads seemed to suggest that the more stuff you got, the better person you were. I learned through those commercials that good people got presents and that my family was trash. I took it into me every year like communion....READ MORE
If you need a reprint via email CLICK HERE
