What it Feels Like to Re-Evaluate Everything You Like After Christmas

I've not had a tangible Christmas gift in years. This isn't some hippie rant about how we should just give love instead of gifts, but when you hear about someone being trampled at a Wal-Mart for like the umpteenth time, maybe it is time to give a little love.

So, retail was bad this year, boo-hoo. I wasn't all that bad this year. I drank, I ate, I pooped, I puked and I still love Christmas cookies.

I didn't depend on a Christmas bonus compiled by relatives and handed out in old shoe boxes at a family gathering. I didn't ask for a dancing Santa, a TV or a lamp that's overpriced.

I didn't ask for my family to be there to greet me at the door or fill glad containers with stuffing that I've never really liked.

I didn't ask for anything. And I didn't because it's sort of disgusting.

Before Christmas, I had a friend that wanted an engagement for the 25th. Nothing else. Good great and dandy, and engagement.

I don't think the person needing to give the engagement sees the full picture. Sure, it's engagement now and then years of Christmas freebies and foul-ups.

You hear someone say, "all I want for Christmas is you," is worse than when you hear some one say, "the n-word." They're lying and acting like they are not responsible for their actions because they can disguise it with the beginning of itself.

If I'm all you want for Christmas, doesn't that mean every Christmas and lifetime to come, or are you going to go ballistic when you don't get the puke colored drapes from World Market next year?

And I'm putting what I've accumulated in perspective. I never want anything for Christmas. It's just a day; another day with crazy cultural innuendos attached to it in the late twentieth century that causes many people to flip the fuck out.

I have many great things. I have a roof. I have a great life. I even have a pool and a computer to write on. I bought them all on different days and didn't take mind to the fact that it wasn't the 25th of December when I bought them.

Everything I have felt special when I bought it because it was. It was priced, planned, gifted and gracious in the middle of August as it was the day after Thanksgiving.

Why it's so important to have something given to you on Christmas, well, I'll never really understand.