Your Very Own Personal Holiday Hell
“Hey dad, you’re making me sad,” my eighteen year-old, love of my life daughter said to me, yesterday. She’s home for the one month college winter break and has been feeling incredibly festive – baking cookies, singing carols, and watching her favorite Christmas movie, Elf, over and over and over.
Bottom line: she wanted to know why I hate Christmas. “How can anybody HATE Christmas?” she demanded to know from me.
“Honey, I don’t hate Christmas and I love the holiday season…really.”
The Grinch-like lie fooled the child, as I got her a drink, patted her on the head and sent her to bed.
I’ve talked about this openly for the last couple of years – about the debacle that this debt-inducing holiday has become. Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ – not a celebration of $60,000 cars with giant red bows on them. Every time the wife tells the husband how much he loves him because he got her a Lexus, makes me want to hurl my morning Corn Flakes. Every time the two pretentious bitches get all loopey because “HE” went to Jared, I want to hit something with a bat. Every time I hear that “every kiss begins with Kay”, the response is always the same: KISS THIS!
They say that retailers rely on their sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas, typically doing half of their year’s business during that one-month period. But guess what? That’s not my friggin problem. I have to pay my mortgage and the brutally outrageous property taxes to enjoy life here in Jersey. Like most Americans, I’m in debt up to my colon and it is a very shitty feeling.
“Dad, I want a 16 gig Ipod Nano… Dad, I want to kill people in the realistic World War 2 war game… Dad, I want, I want, I want….”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
There is no doubt that getting older turns you into one slimey green, mother f@#king Grinch. There’s a reason that bastid hated all the Who’s down in Whoville – because their wild and carefree spending was driving the local Who economy into a recession. The First National Who Bank went belly up after giving loans for Pimplookas and Tatinkas that couldn’t be repaid. Who Motors took a hit and put a shit load of blue and orange people in the poor house. Now no one has even a goddamned nickel to buy a can of Who hash, and the corner market is stuck with 500 pounds of rotting roast beast.
The magic of Christmas was tremendous when I was my kid’s age. Movies like A Christmas Story, Rudolph, and It’s a Wonderful Life brought me such joy. But Grinches don’t care for that sort of fluffy mush any longer. Grinches know their wife would love the Lexus with the bow, but he wonders how he’s going to afford four new tires on the Sebring with the bald tires. And when those commercials air, the intention is to make us all feel like chumps and lousy providers. And of course, my wife always let’s out a “yeah right” when that asshole went to Jared.
“And so this is Christmas and what have you done?” Hey John Lennon, STFU already. I put food on my family’s table and keep the friggin mortgage company off my back by some miracle of God… and THAT’s what I’ve done. I don’t need some deceased Beatle busting my balls any longer. Capiche?
So, ho, ho, ho and all that good shit from the Zman. Make sure to pick out some cigars that will bring joy to all the little herfers in your life – including yourself. Eat lots of fattening shit and send your cholesterol level into orbit. And if you’ve got loving kids like mine, fake it the best you can and get to January first.
All kidding aside, be healthy, safe, and go for the merry. It can’t hurt.
Curmudgeonly yours,
Tommy Zman
JR CIGARS Blog with the Zman
