The Celebration of Not Celebrating Christmas

I believe I was about 9 years old when I got my Super Nintendo system for Christmas. My aunt, who I was living with at the time, bought it months in advance. She also bought my cousin a Sega Genesis. So for months whenever we got the chance (which was whenever she wasn't in the house) we would move the couch (she "hid" them behind there) and visually make love to the back of the boxes. We just could not wait to open these things up and play and play and maybe even play some more until our thumbs no longer existed. And Christmas came. And even though we knew what we were getting, me and my cousin were still beyond excited to get those systems. How our thumbs survived is anyone guess. That story is very important to me for this simple fact: that was the last Christmas I was excited for. Since then, I've gotten either no gifts or gifts with no thought put into them (shoelaces!), or gifts with no thought put into them (again, shoelaces!!!!) and lumped together as a birthday gift (December 26th, baby!). Sure, I've gotten older. So that has to account for some of the lacking excitement. But there's more to it.

You see, I'm not what you would could religious. But I know that there are some religious to Christmas. People look at it like giftsgiftsgifts either in the "gimme" sense or the "here ya go" sense. It shouldn't be this way. The word Christ is in the name, for Christ's sake. See what I did there? Take a hint as to what it would possibly mean.

But (BUT) Christians, do me a favor. Stop making everything related to Christmas about Jesus. Candy canes are not symbols of Jesus. And I'm not making that up either. Someone posted a picture on Facebook of a candy cane and diagrammed all the Jesus in it. The red is the blood of Christ. The white is the cleanliness or something of Jesus. The cane is shaped like a shepherd's cane. I almost vomited. Even religious people were calling that a little over the top. And if a child wants to believe in Santa, let them. Don't brainwash the child tell him that he's/she's wrong. I mean, you believe in a magical man with comic book-like powers too, right?

I won't be celebrating Christmas this year or any other time in the near future. Unless I have some kids and a wife and a dog and a house with a fireplace and a Lexus. So, you know, very unlikely. I will keep enjoying the perks of Christmas, like paid time off. I'm not gonna go up to my boss and say "hey I don't celebrate Christmas so don't pay me". Who would do that? An idiot, that's who. And I'm not an idiot, so there's that.

This won't be a long post because it almost turned into a anti-religious rant, and I won't have that. So I'll end this by saying Happy Christmas, but much more importantly, have a great Derrick's birthday the day after (which is, after all, a much MUCH more worthy holiday to celebrate).