When I was a kid, the holidays were the best. Mom and dad may not have enjoyed it like I did, but they did enjoy seeing the joy in my face. That made all the drudging and dragging themselves and me out of the house worth it. Christmas was a day to go see as much family as you can and flip a coin on who's house you'll settle at for dinner.
Halloween was the time to make sure no one could recognize me and I was able to pillage the neighbors (or the mall) for candy that I couldn't eat 3/4 of because I was swelling up like a tick as I got older. Birthdays were random and Easter was all to ourselves. That is, when dad wasn't being a Jehovah's Witness. When he was, Mom took care of the holiday fun while dad just sat back with his Budweiser and a steak. I'll forever think of my father when I see the old red and white or smell a nice cut of beef seared and sizzling waiting to be eaten. Dammit I'm craving steak now.
Anyways.
So most of the holidays were just family gathering reasons. Thanksgiving was the biggest for my family really, because it's food driven and we're Italians so you do the math. Christmas was the 2nd, though most of it was over before noon really. At least for the kids it was. Instead of a sugar high, it was a present high. When I was really small and we lived in NY, I got Transformers and Star Wars toys. Voltron was a special request for my birthday one year. I still curse myself for not saving those lead paint coated metal mountains of joy I had.
Now a days I see more and more holidays are being driven into the obligation of giving presents, cards or you have to wish someone a Happy *Insert Holiday Here* every time you speak to them. The truth is, no you really don't. Christmas is one of the few world wide holidays and I barely wish to hear Merry Christmas every time I talk to someone on that day, or for the entire fucking week after.
Yeah, call me bitter but it gets old when it's forced. And that's how I feel. Like saying I love you to someone who doesn't love you back. Do they have to say it anyways? Both my parents have gone, I'm not sure if I mentioned in previous posts or not but I lost my mother at the age of 15 and my dad at 26. The loss of my father drove me down a very very dark place, doing things I shouldn't have done that some know of and some it's just not their fucking business. But I still pay for those things and I've learned from them. Not just "Don't do that again!" but why I did it, why I felt like it was ok and why I should have just said no. Yeah, if you don't know the whole story go ahead and ask me and maybe I'll tell you if I don't think you're a douchebag who will use it against me like some have tried to.
Back to the holiday celebrations, or lack there of. I live alone, I have for years. Yes I've had relationships in this time. But unless I have someone to celebrate some of the holidays with, I don't care for them. My family has broken up since my dad passed away. On a scale of Brady Bunch to Partridge Family, we pretty much became The Jackson Five. You really don't want us all in the same room unless you want an alcoholic or four fighting with the drug addict who stole from one of his brothers kids or whatever. It's drama when we get together and that's why I keep to myself. I have my close circle of friends, which I consider to be more family than most of my own blood. Why? Because unlike my family, they've stuck around in my adult life even after I did something really fucking stupid.
Don't even get me started about the religious mumbo jumbo bullshit I witnessed in my life. Like I said before, dad was a part time Jehovah's Witness, along with my aunt and her 6 kids. One of which does everything a witness SHOULDN'T do and yet preaches to me about "Satan Claus" and what not. Another preaches to me as he cheats on his wife, another gets drunk every night to mask the pain of his fucked up daughters and how he couldn't save them from their even more fucked up mothers influence. Or whatever his reason is. Or the one who disbaned his ties to the JW community so he can just get drunk over his divorce and his kids being taken away from him by a maniac psycho bitch of an ex wife who took advantage of his heart.
Whew. That was more than I thought it would be. Sorry.
So when you say Happy *Holiday* to someone and they don't say it back, don't call them grumpy or a scrooge, don't say they're bitter. Maybe they just don't celebrate that holiday or just don't care for it?
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