Christmas, or as I like to call it, Sunday

Christmas has always been my very least favourite holiday. Even as a very small child, Christmas makes parents fight over which grandparents we will visit, over how much everything cost and how we have no money, over how much work goes into all the cooking. And parents try to hide this from the kids, but it's impossible to miss the tension and anger that fills the room. With divorced parents, it's a fight every year about who gets to have the kids. Even with a court order in place, somehow there is always a fight, and so many under-breath mumblings about how the other parent is treating this parent and can't that parent just be nice because, Jesus Christ, it's fucking Christmas!

I also grew up with a batch of adult step-siblings, who were constantly on and off drugs, and would randomly show up for Christmas, or not. Sometimes sober, sometimes not. But we always had to watch them like hawks, because if they were allowed to wander the house alone, they were likely to sneak into my bedroom and steal all my babysitting money out of my piggy bank.

After I left home, it grew into a holiday where I had to first spend a lot of money and then spend time with these crazy people and their crazy drama. And sure, there were good moments, but even those were spent waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After several years of this, I finally just gave up. First I instituted a strict "handmade gifts only" policy, to take a huge chunk of the stress out of the whole situation. As a knitter, this often included cozy yarn-based things, but not always. My favourite holiday gift is to make a giant batch of jam or marinara sauce (or both!), can it properly in jars, and give everyone a jar or two. It's handmade, it's delicious, it costs about a dollar, it lives in the cupboard until they want to use it to make dinner super super easy. If you can get the jars back, then  the project becomes even cheaper.

But even this got to be too much. So my "handmade gifts only" policy morphed into a "no gifts at all" policy, and holy crap, that was amazing. All the shopping stress and knitting stress and making stuff stress was extracted from the holiday. THIS was sure to save Christmas.

Except it didn't. Because the fighting and the drama and the stress of a lifetime of terrible Christmasses was still there, was still very, very apparent in every motion of the event.

So I quit Christmas altogether. And it is absolutely the best decision I have ever made. I'll be spending the afternoon with friends, drinking too much and eating too much. There is a strict no-gifts policy. And I'm positively giddy with excitement about Christmas for the first time in decades.

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In all this time of hating Christmas, I grew to hate one thing even more than I hate Christmas: Christmas MUSIC. How is it acceptable to spend two months out of every year listening to the same 40 or so songs? I have never understood that and I never will. But I make a very small handful of exceptions to my Christmas-Music-is-Hell policy, and I feel it's important to share those with you. In no particular order, I present, the only Christmas music that doesn't make me want to slit my wrists:


Blue Christmas, by Elvis Presley.
Maybe it's because my Christmasses were so often Blue, but boy do I love a depressing Christmas song.




Christmastime is Here, by Vince Guaraldi Trio.
I'm pretty sure my reasoning on this one is the same as for Blue Christmas - the lyrics are about happy things, but the song itself is so very sad. Plus the movie stars a Christmas-hater. Even as a small child, I could really empathize with Charlie.




Baby Please Come Home, by U2.
Maybe it's because I fantasize about Bono singing this to me, or maybe it's because, once again, we're working on the unhappy Christmas theme.




God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, by Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.
The bluegrassy arrangement, the minor chords, the lyrics juxtaposing fear of Satan with 'tidings of comfort and joy" - and the odd yet delightful combination of Sarah McLachlan's voice with BNL. This is one that doesn't quite fit my stereotype.




Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth, by David Bowie and Bing Crosby.
Perhaps the world's most bizarre and amazing duet (the singing starts about halfway through if you want to skip ahead).




Santa Clause Go Straight to the Ghetto, by Belle and Sebastien.
This last one is a new addition - I only just discovered it yesterday, but it's one that actually puts a smile on my face.