Beginning with Thanksgiving and extending through New Year’s Day, am I the only one who finds this season overbearing and fatiguing?  I doubt it.

I drove to the vet’s office today for cat food.  While there, I jokingly asked the woman helping me, “Are you enjoying the holiday season?”  My tone was both facetious and inquisitive.

She looked at me with forlorn eyes as a grimace played across her face, and then she replied, “Right…  Just lovin’ it.  How ’bout you?”

Our shared contempt piled upon the counter between us.

Why does this season invoke such loathing?  Could it be we’ve made it far too demanding, far too stressful to be joyous?  Is it that we abhor the obligations heaped on top of already too-fast and too-unforgiving lives?

No matter the cause, we do it to ourselves.  We rush to and fro to find the perfect gifts even though we know they rarely are appreciated.  We scuffle with a lack of time as our to-do list grows endlessly.  We must decorate, cook, wrap, ship, travel, call, and engage in all manner of tedious hell, and we hope throughout that we have not forgotten something or someone.  We spend too much on too many even while complaining of exorbitant bills and unforgiving creditors.  Disappointment blankets us from beginning to end.

And all for what?

My friend Libby works in mental health and cares for those suffering from psychological ailments and issues.  She reiterates constantly how this time of year slows down the number of patients coming in for help, but the rebound occurs right after the horrordays.  Her life becomes a living hell around the first of January as people flood into care facilities seeking help to overcome the litany of complaints and disorders caused and aggravated by this time of year.

It’s pitiful.

That’s why I dislike the holiday season.  Too many demands and too many frayed nerves collide in monumental adversity.

But it gets worse.

While so many fret and fuss about social and familial obligations, a plethora of lives crawl through these months with no such problems—because they have nothing and no one.  Their holiday pain is lack of housing, insufficient food, no money to buy gifts for children, lack of medication because they spent what little they had on something for the grandkids, and on it goes.

But let’s not worry about those folks.  We have parties to plan, meals to cook, gifts to address, and all sorts of cheer to which we must attend.  And that’s sufficient reason for us to complain.

Oh, the stress of it all.  Oh, the agony of seeing the in-laws and grandma and having to eat that wretched pumpkin loaf.  How can anyone get through such anguish…

I was tired of it by the time I saw my first Christmas commercial back in October.  I’m very tired of it now.

So while most of you celebrate a pagan holiday stolen by Christians so they might compete with the winter solstice, and while you bitch and moan about how much you have to do and how much you have to endure, and while you plan and plot so as to maximize your cheer at the expense of real happiness, try being a little less selfish for once.  How about buying one less gift for those on your list and sending that money to a charity instead?

Did you know it only costs $240 per year to sponsor a single pet in a no-kill shelter?  That’s $20 per month.  That’s one gift in most cases, but it’s certainly one gift spread among a handful of people.  Is it too much to practice humanity at the time of year we proclaim it most but show it least?

Or how about spending a few hundred dollars on toys and donating them to your local charity providing gifts to underprivileged children?  Again, $200 – $300 is meaningless and would easily be spent on people in your life.  But I bet those people aren’t going hungry, aren’t homeless or living in a shelter, and are going to find plenty under the tree anyway—even if you don’t spend it on them.  Why not look outside those who don’t need a damn thing and think of those who need everything.

Have pity on the needy, whether they be human or not, and show the true spirit of the season by giving to those who don’t already have and who will undoubtedly need long after the new year has begun.

In the meantime, I’ll continue being the Grinch, the miserable old fart who thinks all of this is a waste of time and an insult to lives around the globe.  I’ll wallow in my own depression and angst while looking down my nose at those who have but who fail to dispense to those who have not.