Long story short, I am a nonconformist.
Maybe you, gentle reader, think it’s a good plan to cram yourselves into crowds of uptight shoppers at places ranging from big-box nightmares to pretentious upmarket boutiques during the ‘holiday season.’ Don’t neglect to rev up all this discretionary spending by getting a mammoth turkey carcass for a meal so delicious people only eat it once a year. Perhaps all that ‘holiday cheer’ in real life is too much for you — the bell ringers outside the big box; the ‘old-timey’ charm decorating the boutiques — and you decided to do go through Amazon and such, bombarding your amygdala with algorithmic come-ons. Either way, and you know it, you’re being operated upon like a gerbil pacing on a wheel. Doing it for the kids, can’t let the in-laws down, perfect time to propose, whatever, and now you’re lock-stepping with the stampede. Plus don’t forget that murdered tree which you’ll be kicking to the curb next month. What’s a better way to celebrate Christ?
Not me, man. Thank God my parents are now dead and gone so I don’t have the hassle of shopping for them anymore! And ... the best way to protest Trump is Don’t Buy It.
Buy Nothing Day. I tell ’em at work in advance, I’m opting out. Don’t you dare give me anything. Because, however much I might like whoever, there’s always going to be at least one jerk and I’ll be damned if they get me standing in line or clicking the Bezos button to accommodate their ego trip. Nope. I did it for years with my now ex-in-laws and I’m so over that. The last time I got handed a present I didn’t ask for — gotcha! — I jammed it in the nearest trash can, unopened. Don’t go nuclear with me. I have no remorse. I did my time in the neurotic middle-aged middle-class. What to get the wife’s mother? What to get her father? Are there nieces and nephews, too? More beeping Barneys. Jeez, it was bad enough to figure what to get the wife because she figured I could read her mind so she dispensed with dropping any hints.
Too bad I couldn’t read her mind, because then I would have known all she wanted was a divorce.
But, like staying together for the kids, I used to go along with the Christmas cult. I could get away with the low-key approach during those honeymoon years when all I wanted for Christmas was sex. The thing about about kids, they legitimize the consumerism and the conformism. Kid comes along, next thing, bigger car, bigger job, bigger house — gotcha! Kids are the perfect excuse to become that selfish, materialistic, lower-taxes-voting hypocrite the college version of you swore you’d never be.
Santa Claus is the wing man for capitalism. Don’t Buy It.
In a lot of ways, it was my original disdain for ‘the holidays’ that produced my final misanthropic attitude. My last wife — I’ve burned through a few — increasingly objected to what she considered my parsimonious, anti-social stance. I should add here that, in addition to avoiding crowds, I oppose the shooting of fireworks, flag-waving, even handing shitty little packages of candy to other people’s squealing children, all of which bugs the crap out of my cat. Anyway, there we were, wife and I, having our traditionally modest Thanksgiving dinner and she picks that moment to inform me she’s “looking for a place.” I guess if she wanted to give me a reason to dislike Thanksgiving, then that was a gift. Then she changes her mind and we uneasily attempt to repair the breach in our relationship. That goes fine until — you guessed it! — it’s our traditionally modest Christmas day when she lets me know she has “found a place.” And she moves out New Year’s Eve.
The divorce papers? They show up, notarized, six months later on my birthday.
© 2024 C. Kurtz.