December birthdays get completely bypassed.
Anyone who in born is December knows the “Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, and Happy New Years” card all too well. Not only is your birthday often spent gift shopping for the people you love, but in return you only get one gift (with the same budget as everyone else’s single-occasion gift) that makes you question the effort you put into their birthday. To top it all off, you also get the gift of guilt when you are upset you didn’t get two presents because you don’t want to be “that” person.
Putting up Christmas lights is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Not only will those suckers be so tangled that you will question the entire concept of Christmas, but you will end up standing in the cold and trying to untangle them with numb hands. Then comes the actual act of putting them up. They will never look as great as they do on your Pinterest board and your neighbours’ WILL look nicer than yours.
I can only watch the same movie so many times…
Yes, Elf is a great movie, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch it three to five times a year in the span of one month. I don’t even want to watch it once a year. There are a lot of great Christmas movies out there but at no other time of the year would anyone be expected to watch endless movies about the same event, many with similar plots, so many times in a month. Coincidentally, the only one I will tolerate watching so often is The Grinch.
Going to the mall is like venturing through Dante’s Inferno.
Each area is like a different circle of hell with different types of people in them: the jewellery shops are full of confused looking men trying to find something that the woman in their life will appreciate, the clothing stores are full of exasperated parents trying to find the right sizes for their kids, and the food court is full of tired looking people who just want to breathe but are packed in like sardines. It is a mess of sweat, heaving lifting, confusion, and ultimately, regret. You might expect to go for a casual trip to the mall before the holidays, but lo and behold, November will grant you no shopping peace. You can’t even wait until Christmas is over, either. Boxing day is no longer a day, but a season. The moral of the story? Avoid the mall like the plague for at least two and a half months or be prepared to suffer the consequences.
Family can be overwhelming.
Finals didn’t stress you out enough? How about being in a room full of your family for an extended period of time. The drilling questions, the tireless life advice… all just in time for when you thought you had survived the hard part of the month. Pro tip: do not make the mistake of crying when they ask how finals went and want to know about your dating life. Pretend you are someone tough as nails so you don’t have to deal with crushing disappointment hitting you from all angles. Personal favourite? Ron Swanson.
You have to get up at an ungodly hour on Christmas morning.
All I want for Christmas is to sleep in. But there is so much to do: so much food to make, so many people to see, so many things to clean. I mean, I may get to open some pretty great presents, but I won’t be able to comprehend what they are until I’ve gotten at least four more hours of sleep.
What even is money?
Thought that broke student life was bad enough? Welcome to Christmas, a time of year where people who can’t afford groceries find money from God-knows-where to try and show people they love them. All we’re trying to do here is pay off our student debt and have a little money left over so we can numb our pain with alcohol…
Even so… I guess Christmas is pretty great.
You get to be surrounded by people you love and get all those Christmas themed candles, body products, and eat as much as you want with no one being able to say anything because hey, “you’re just getting in that Christmas spirit!” And if there is one thing I can get behind, it’s stuffing my face with turkey and pie.