One of my relatives on my Dad's side, I believe it is a 2nd cousin, used to send a bragging card every year. I could careless if one of my cousins was going to Med school, who they were dating and if they were a stud athlete for some crappy town in South Dakota. The only thing worse than those types of Holiday cards, is receiving a card from an elderly relative who complains about all the health problems they suffered from the last year.

As for holiday parties for your job. The poor bastards that work under me in our department used to have to set up for the holiday party and clean it up the next day. I always thought it was shitty to force people to set up there own holiday party, especially when they receive no holiday bonus or gifts and are only fed pizza. The last time they had an actual party was my first year, and I skipped out on that one.

My biggest pet peeve is now the 24hrs of The Christmas Story on TBS and the fact that by Christmas day you are so sick of holiday specials that all you can do is watch some crappy bowl game or Blue/Gray All-Star game before it was eliminated.

Christmas Carols, period. They stick in your mind, dam them!

Cold and flu season.

That depression one gets from not getting enough sunlight.

Dealing with other depressed people who don't realize they're depressed.

Driving in ice, sleet and snow.

Ok, I'm in, as today is an absolute SUCKFEST of a day so far (and its only 1:10pm....

1. Everyone calling and wanting me to "donate" gift certificates for their fucking company christmas party....oh gooody, let me just give away some shit to you. Logic? : Since I already pay you for whatever it is I buy from you, why do I now have to GIVE you more stuff? Shouldn't YOU be giving ME something?

2. Every hotel manager running around town saying, " How's business, we're real busy(LIE--NO ONE is here, I know this!)" So, umm, we're sending you quite a few of our guests(no you are not), will you be donating to our Christmas party this year, hmmmm????"

3. When tourists DO get here, they will all come at once, and we'll be crushingly busy, and that will be right when my mom arrives and wants to meet for breakfast and chat about the weather ("I'm a little busy here, mom, really, can we do this later?"---like in MAY)

4. Internet shopping...due to identity theft, shopping on-line when you actually don't live where the purchase is being sent is now considered torture by the geneva convention.

Gotta go now. I have to go driving around handing out 36 plates of holiday cookies we baked until 3 am last night, oh, and lest I forget: $400 dollars worth of Gift Certificates...ho ho ho

i'm trying to plan a trip to Belize right now. remind me not to show up when everyone else shows up

my parents send out a holiday letter, but most of their friends live overseas, so it's usually filled with diatribes on the war and the bush administration, as well as rants on the adverse affects of american consumer culture. plus, my brothers and i are kind of all fuck-ups, so it turns out to be pretty self-deprecating.

more gripes: what the hell has happened to customer service? Why is it that no one is willing to help you, and you seem to have to do all the legwork yourself? Is this the ultimate manifestation of our self-service society?

For example, one of my many responsbilities at my job is to monitor/track/maintain our cell phone accounts (hellish, I know). So we have account reps for both T-Mobile and Verizon. Both accounts are fairly substantial, with the Verizon account topping out at over 130 users. So you'd think they'd be bending over backwards to help us, right? Wrong. Everytime I contact our rep to take care of some little niggling detail, I get the "you should call customer care to take care of that." Uh, why don't YOU fucking call customer care? Isn't that YOUR job?

Another gripe: UPS. First, they don't deliver on Saturdays (what is UP with that?) and second, they've made it virtually impossible to get packages. For example, a relative sent us a Christmas gift from a company called Fruit Forward, which specializes in wines. Naturally, they are not going to leave a package on the front stoop without a 21+ aged person's signature. Well, we're never home during the day, so I got all sorts of reminders stuck on my front door. They give you instructions on how to change delivery addresses online. I go online to try and change delivery, and my package number is not in their system (twice, this happened). Finally I call the 1-800 number, wade through a stupid automated system to finally get to a person who lo and behold, can access my tracking number and change the delivery address. Why is that so difficult?

I have to say that my customer service experiences this holiday season have been nothing but ruthlessly efficient.

I don't like anything about Christmas. My wife lives for it. It's always a point of contention in December. My in-laws are great but I really don't like flying to Minnesota from Florida just be saturated with church, Christmas activities, kids' pagents and her extended family.

I was lamenting the fact that I don't have a company Christmas, nor does FEMGAR, cos I really wanna get drunk and obnoxious in public this year for some reason.

not waking up on christmas morning with my kids.

The first day back from Christmas holidays when everyone asks what you got for Christmas when they really don't care and just want to tell you what they got so you can see how much they are loved.

I like experiencing Christmas from the sidelines, but I wouldn't mind at all if it was cancelled this year.

But I love NEW YEARS!

There are so many reasons to get annoyed and overwhelmed at Christmas, I've settled on only buying presents for my kids, wife, wife's mother, wife's father and wife's step-father. Beyond that only leads to hassle and grief. If I gave a gift to everyone who felt they had to give me one, the cycle would never end, nor would the debt.

Christmas isn't about giving gifts anyway. It's about togetherness, thankfulness, reverence for ritual. And drinking.

12. It only comes once a year.

commercials where idiotic couples in turtlenecks buy each other a lexus or a bmw.

I haven't even started shopping for Xmas presents yet. I tried to go to the mall today but there was seriously NO parking. I gave up after riding around for 10 minutes.

Also, I wish you could put bills on hold for the month of December. It'd be so much easier.

Good for you- that is cool.

So you'll like this article then, from the SF Chronicle. I hope the idea takes off.

Feel guilty buying a Christmas tree? Then rent one.
By DAN GOODIN, Associated Press Writer

Friday, December 16, 2005

(12-16) 00:25 PST San Francisco (AP) --

It might just take a Christmas miracle to deck out these spindly branches with ornaments or arrange a pile of gifts around their slender, bare trunks, but they've all been snatched up, and it's hard to argue with success.

The trees, rented out by San Franciscans for $90 each during the holiday season, are designed to give residents an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional, firs and pines.

The fruitless olives, Brisbane boxes and others range from six to 12 feet and aren't quite Charlie Brown's sad sapling, but they're definitely not the full-bodied evergreens most Christmas revelers have grown accustomed to.

That's just fine by Stacy Collins Johnson, who said she rented a live primrose so her two children, ages 4 and 6, can help replant it in one of San Francisco's needy neighborhoods once the holidays have passed.

"I wasn't really sure how this would play out, having a nontraditional Christmas tree in our house," said Johnson, a 43-year-old stay-at-home mom. "I thought they'd be upset, and they love it. They named the tree Charlie Green."

Like other San Franciscans participating in the program, Johnson paid to have the tree, complete with pot and soil, delivered to her home. Her family will decorate it, celebrate Christmas, and then city officials will arrange to pick up the tree and plant it in a neighborhood in need of greenery.

As December rolls around each year, environmentally conscious residents of San Francisco are confronted with a choice: buy a real tree grown expressly to be chopped down and strung with lights or get an artificial one. Either option has its drawbacks. Environmentalists say growing real trees is a waste of valuable resources and discarding them often clogs local landfills; artificial trees often contain lead and other harmful chemicals and also usually end up in dumps.

"We call it the guilt-free option," said Mark Westlund, spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Environment, which decided to introduce the program earlier this year. "You don't have to worry about cutting down a living tree and you don't have to worry about buying a tree with petroleum materials."

San Francisco created the program with help from the nonprofit group Friends of the Urban Forest, which plants trees along the city's streets. Within a week of announcing the program, all 100 trees were claimed, Westlund said.

Delivery began last week, and will be picked up during the first week of January. Officials will handle any damaged trees on a case-by-case basis and use the experience to shape their future policy, Westlund said.

"I'm kind of an unrepentant tree hugger," said George Slack, who rented three trees for his cabinet shop. "There's something very nice about having a living piece of greenery in your living environment this time of year."

But not everyone who rents trees to be planted after Christmas fits that description, at least when it comes to those picking similar offerings elsewhere in the country.

"My customers aren't granola-eating, sandal-wearing type people," said John Fogel, owner of the Original Living Christmas Tree Company in Portland, Ore., which has rented Christmas trees for 14 years. "It's a practical thing they do around the holidays."

12/30/2005, muhfuh

I almost posted, "at least I get to go light homeless people on fir with dudes like FT and Jagged after Christmas"

This is the saddest and most respectable "why i hate christmas" reason posted so far. A close second is the lack of family significance for Dri.

I think the one thing that makes the commercialism and typical irritations of the holidays redeemable is the ability for me to spend time with family. I understand that everyone's family is different. Some worse than others. Some way better. My family is not the best. In fact, I really struggle being around my older brother. He turned out to be the black sheep, to overuse a cliche (is that redundant?). But, because of this, he takes his apparent guilt for being a jackass to our family out on me. Constant ridiculing and provoking. Too much information to try and explain here. But, even despite this, I think it is important to be around it, even if feelings are hurt. It's real. It's not random musicians playing rock christmas songs in the mall. It's not people wandering aimlessly with no apparent need to finish shopping through the mall seemingly anticipating every move you try and make to go around them. It's not a lack of parking. It's not giving gifts. It's not receiving gifts.

Christmas is a time to be forced to be around people you are eternally linked to. For me, it's almost like being around the people that know every way to irritate you and anger you is a way to come back down from the superficiality of shopping at Christmas and dealing with the irony of "peace and goodwill to all". If anything, the inherent psychosis of people in this country emerges from that last friday in November until Christmas Day when everyone calms the fuck down. It tries to re-emerge on the 26th of December, but it dies out shortly after. Then business as usual. I guess my only complaint about Christmas is the absolute insanity and disrespect most people show for each other before Christmas Day. I have been witness to countless verbal fights over stolen parking spots and claiming rights to the last item on the shelf. Mindless bickering only proving the selfishness of the majority of the population makes me want to never buy a gift for Christmas. I would rather buy someone I loved a gift every other day than be a part of the pandemonium that ensues in this time of year.

But, it all is resolved for me when I can forget about the people I don't know and won't experience again for another year and when I sit around and have dinner and spend time with my family. Especially when there are new additions--like nephews and nieces--to enjoy.

I know this isn't exactly thread related but the quote got me thinking--so, I vomited. sorry.

I have the mother of all reasons, but prefer not to share

i love Christmas.

Yeah, I've got a reason to dislike Christmas because of one particular event, but another amazing event the same Christmas offsets the dislike.

Paul McCartney, people. John and Yoko ain't much better.

I have no problem with Christmas. I do have a problem if people try to infect me with their negative vibes, though.