De-Christmas-Fying

I have been in a funk for several days now. I just can't get my workout mojo back, get into the groove, stay on the wagon. I am crabby and unmotivated. It really sucks balls. I figured out today where part of my disdain has come from. I started the monstrous task of putting away all my holiday crap. Now some might argue that December 26th is the perfect time to say "fuck you" to the lights, tree, ornaments, garland, and stockings. I beg to differ. I spend days putting it all up, meticulously planning where each poinsettia garland is hung, where the burgundy ornaments are hung up the stairs versus the frosty blue ones on the evergreen swags in my kitchen. It is stressful to put it all up but yet so nice to glance around my home at the cozy holiday splendor. I'm not one of those assholes who turns my Christmas lights on well into March. But I will take it down in my own due time.

Christmas break symbolizes many things. Kids being home from school to terrorize the shit out of each other, whine about being bored every 5 seconds, and to act like shit heads on Christmas morning when they scan the array of packages and decide Santa has not brought them their most desired gift. Fucking ingrates. It is a time for socializing, for parties where fattening dips and sweets are consumed, where pomegranate cocktails spill freely, especially on beige carpet. It is a time for headaches, from having to pay quadruple the cost for a fucking robotic asshole hamster toy on Amazon because it is the hottest toy, and also from pounding 3 peppermint martinis and then doing shots of Jaegermeister just because I think I'm 21 again. Praise the pharmaceutical companies for creating good drugs. It is a time for recreational consumption of anti-anxiety pills when the joy/stress/financial burden of the holidays is too God damn much to handle. Hello Valium and Xanax, my lovers... It is a time for gingerbread house making, cookie baking, shoveling, grocery shopping, and occasionally working off a few (thousand) extra calories with a trip to the gym. It is a time to bust out rolls of gift wrap, tissue paper in every color, bows, and gifts bags. We wrap till we are blind and slightly retarded, slurring our words from the inane task. I have been known to utter, "I have MORE fucking gifts to wrap?! Cocksucking Christmas presents..." as I slam that glass of milk and nibble on the cookies left out for the fat fucker in the red suit. It is a time for reindeer food and urging kids to get their sweet asses to bed or Santa will have to skip our house. This is not really about Santa, it's more about cleverly arranging the obnoxious amount of presents we vow every year to cut back on. My mom swears EVERY year, "Let's just keep it down to a dull roar. We are not going to go as crazy next year." Yet there we are on Christmas morning, slowly watching each person open gift after gift after God damn gift. We take coffee breaks, baste the turkey breaks, take a nap breaks, shower breaks, take a shit breaks, meal breaks. It is a multi-hour event in our house. Fuck, I'm exhausted just TYPING this.

So once it's all said and done, it is a let down of excitement and emotion. I mean you build it up for months with the shopping and the music and the pretty lights in the trees. And then, BAM! It's gone. Faster than you can say "Old Saint Nick". It's just really depressing. I'm not saying I want to live in some fucked-up, year-round Christmas utopia. That would be creepy as shit. But maybe Santa could pop some happy pills into the grown-up stockings. A little sumthin'-sumthin' to ease the transition into bleak, freezing cold nothingness that is known as January. Christmas is like a powerful drug that we become addicted to at first glimpse of glittery garland after Halloween. Sure, we bitch and moan, "My WORD, I cannot believe how much earlier they seem to put out all the Christmas paraphernalia each year! This is plain NUTTY!" But you know you secretly love it. You see those stockings with furry trim and all the choices in gift bags, you smell those cinnamon pine cones, you hear that light station finally switch over to ALL Christmas music and you are fucking PSYCHED! You agree with your Christmas hater friends how it's so annoying but secretly you are calling them SHB's----Santa Hating Bitches. Fucking twats, they do not even KNOW the joy this season brings to you! They need to be beaten down with a massive 5-foot candy cane. Till they are bleeding profusely. And you will stand above them, singing "Deck the Halls", "Jingle Bells", and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", in a loud, bellowing Christmas-carol-y voice. And when they FINALLY claim that Christmas is the greatest, most show-stopping, light show bonanza-filled holiday to ever exist, maybe THEN you will call for medical help. But only after burning their ass with a big candy cane branding iron. See who's Santa's bitch NOW. Take my lights down on the 26th my fucking ass.....