Christmas sucks.

There, I said it. No one else in the world is brave enough to say such a thing, but now I have. It is not the holiday in itself that I hate. It is the weeks and weeks of frenzied spending, cooking, and cleaning that go along with it. I would love nothing more than to spend the holiday season sitting by a roaring fire, eating roasted chestnuts, sipping eggnog, and enjoying the beauty of the snow falling outside my window, however, that is not reality.

Every parent and even a few single people know just what Christmas brings. Stress, strain and a drain on the budget so large it nearly makes one ill to think of it. It shouldn’t be that way, you say. Christmas is a time for caring and thinking about one’s fellow man, you say? A time to reflect upon the birth of Christ (or the celebrations of Hannakuh, Kwanza or whichever other holidays other religions celebrate at that time), a time when peace on earth is our most fervent wish. Well I for one would just like to tell you that those of us out here who live in the REAL world have got a big surprise for you.

When Christmas decorations go up in local discount/department stores, do you REALLY think they are thinking about peace on earth? They are thinking about a PIECE of the earth. The piece they want is a big ole honkin piece of your wallet, or your checkbook, or heaven help you, your credit card. When Santa is competing with the mummy masks for shelf space, and the only figure looking over the manger at the Baby Jesus is a grinning plastic pumpkin, something tells me that peace on earth is not at the forefront of the sales industry’s minds.

It has become impossible to find Christmas items for sale any where near Christmas. Last year I made the mistake of going to buy eggnog on Christmas Eve (the stuff left over from Thanksgiving had mysteriously developed a strange color and odor between the time I had last gone to the grocery store and the big day.) when I couldn’t find any in the store, not even the canned kind that keeps for years, I asked the stocker where they were hiding it. He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said "Well, ma’am, we won’t be getting any more of THAT in until next year. Gotta stock up early around here."

Needless to say, I slinked out of the store as quickly as possible, not wishing to have anyone else know of my great sin. What a fool I was, silly me, I hadn’t thought to purchase a gallon of eggnog six weeks before Christmas. Who would have thought that since eggnog was a seasonal item, stocked only for Christmas, that it would be sold out BEFORE the holiday actually arrived!

I will not even mention the terror of the last minute trip to visit Santa. Lord help you if you have actually prepared for Christmas ahead of time and bought and wrapped gifts early. Let me warn all of you who have no children but are planning to procreate in the future. Never under any circumstances purchase any gifts before Christmas Eve. This action will only result in a sudden changing of minds on your childrens part, and you will find yourself out searching the Toys R Us dumpster in the dark, attempting to locate some strange item that no one in this universe has ever heard of. I recommend giving the child a gift certificate and telling them that Santa’s workshop was back ordered and he had to give them a rain check.

This may seem cruel, but take it from me, it is no more cruel than you will wish to be to the child after duking it out for an hour with a 320 pound female halfback who swears like a sailor the minute she sees you have a coveted "Baby Barfbag Tomagotchi" clutched in your hand. After you have recovered from the concussion you receive from being tackled and wrestled to the ground by this woman, all you will be able to do is crawl to the nearest exit and drag yourself to the next store. And forget the toy. It was ripped for her hands by a little old man wielding a cane and a bad case of the scrooges. What may lie in store for you at your next stop? The fight will most likely begin anew, in which case owing to the injuries you have previously sustained (and possibly your low threshold for pain) the only Barbie you will end up with will be the bald headed barbies from the return/defective bin.

I have yet to make it to a Christmas eve without my children adding something impossible to find to their wish lists. It is almost the most exciting part of the holiday. My husband and I have a little bet every year to see what they will come up with at the last minute. Neither of us has ever won, because what they ask for is generally something we have never even imagined existed. Children have an wonderful sense of the absurd, or at least I think they do. Any other thought I come up with as to why they would send their loving parents off into battle for a simple toy gives me the heebie jeebies. I dont like to think that my kids are plotting my death. That is most definately NOT a holiday perker upper, so I ignore the signs that this may be true and delude myself with the thought that maybe they just dont realize what getting these things entails.

That is why when people laugh out loud at the thought of a child playing contentedly with the boxes that held the toys that were supposed to be so necessary to the happiness and well being of the child, I smile and reach for my rubber mallet. Only someone who is clinically insane or just plain weird would find such a thing funny, and it disturbs and frightens me to think someone that insane is out on the streets. They are either early releases from the psychiatric ward or they have NEVER felt the pure, abject, stark raving FEAR that courses through one’s veins as the child adds some new goody to the Christmas list on the eve of the most expensive holiday of the year.

The people who can laugh at such a thing have never spent hours searching through the local convenience store (the only store left open at 11:30 at night, Christmas Eve) in vain hopes that the item will magically appear in the aisles next to the 21 dollar and fifty cent bottle of baby acetaminophen, and those items that shall remain nameless lest we offend someone who doesn’t particularly care to know how to prevent various and sundry diseases, etc.

The item never appears, and the store clerk is very likely to follow you around and eventually call the police due to the haggard and stressed look upon your face. Things will be alright however, because the police officer who responds to the call will have the same look on his face. He’s been out all evening looking for the Revolutionary War G.I. Joe, complete with dysentary medication in a genuine collectible bottle.