I Didn't Write A Christmas Blog Post (Until Now)

According to some search engine statistics sites which may or may not be completely inaccurate, people were doing a lot of searching for the terms "Merry Christmas" and "Christmas" in the past few days. So writing an* Xmas blog would have been the perfect way to get some serious search engine traffic (if you care about that sort of thing, which I don't even though I share my blog on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Google+, etc.) But everyone and their cat was writing posts about Christmas. I say cat because dogs aren't smart enough or evil enough to commandeer our laptops at night, let's be serious.

So, writing a blog about how my Christmas went and what Santa brought me, etc. would be, in my opinion, beating a dead reindeer. (By the way, Santa brought me an Xbox and my brothers bought me Lego Lord of the Rings so I'm the happiest camper that ever camped in a warm trailer with electricity hook up and a big screen TV.) I started a post about my favourite Christmas things, including Hershey's Candy Cane Kisses, Love Actually and Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy's Christmas jumpers. But really, I felt like I wasn't actually in love with all of these things as much as I thought I was or as much as I used to be. (Except the candy cane kisses. Those things are amazing.)

So, here's the sad thing about Christmas at this stage in my life: I just don't really care about it that much. Whether this has something to do with the fact that my parents recently sent me an email trying to convince me that Santa isn't real (they just want credit for the amazing gift he brought for me) or because I'm extremely lazy and lifting my arm to hang crappy decorations made by kindergarten-age-Alene is just way too much work, I don't know. (Another side note - my family didn't have a tree at all this year and guess what? I got no unnecessary arm exercise because of it. All of my arm-energy went to lifting my fork during Christmas dinners. Win.) Maybe there's just so much other stuff happening right now that Christmas kind of gets overshadowed. Or maybe, Xmas just isn't actually as exciting the 20th time around.

I'm not saying that I don't like being with my family, because that's my favourite thing in the whole world. But, I believe that you shouldn't need excuses (like Christmas or raiding a closet to find the sweatpants your cousin stole from you) to see the people you love. And I'm not saying that I don't love watching people open the gifts I bought them, even if the smile on their face is completely fake because "Sweet Jolly Ranchers, ANOTHER candle, Alene, seriously?"

I didn't ask for anything this year (except for a KNOPE 2012 campaign poster which I did not receive. I'm gonna go drip my tears all over my new Xbox controller about it.) The only things I want out of Christmas are alcohol (got lots of that), a cheese ball (I saw one at dinner, but I don't know that anyone opened it, which is upsetting. Or they opened it and I didn't get any, which is even more upsetting.), some good laughs (check), and A KNOPE 2012 CAMPAIGN POSTER, MOM AND DAD! IT WAS ONLY LIKE $12 ON NBC.COM!

So, where am I going with this? And why have I started so many of my paragraphs with "So?" I feel like my English professor would be punching me in the back of the head if she were reading this over my shoulder right now. She also says that parenthesis are a waste of time but I like to interrupt myself a lot and sometimes dashes just don't format the way you want them to. Sorry, what was I talking about?

Christmas.

Does Christmas get old? Yeah, maybe. My mother says it starts to get interesting again once you have kids, so here's hoping Christmas remains boring for a few more years.

Some people love Christmas for the gifts, other people love it for the food. Because you can't buy and cook a turkey any other time of year (pause to let that sink in.) And I mean if you're really in need of a gravy fix there's always KFC. Except that I think every tsp of KFC gravy takes 2.4 minutes of your life. That's the secret ingredient in KFC chicken - human life force. Still tasty though.

I actually prefer Easter to Christmas, probably because there's a lot less snow and a lot more finding chocolate eggs in random places for the next week (or the next year, which HAS happened.) And Easter hasn't been completely taken over by consumerism and AMAZING deals on KNOPE 2012 CAMPAIGN POSTERS, MOM AND DAD! At least I don't think it has. I mean, every type of chocolate bar has now converted itself to egg form. But egg-shaped Hershey's cookies and cream chocolates are the greatest thing in the entire world so I'm not complaining. Okay, maybe Easter is selling out too, but in a more delicious way than Christmas.

So, (damn it!) let's conclude this babbling. Christmas is a time for giving, sharing, loving and smiling even though you didn't get the gift you wanted. And no matter how consumerized it gets, you just have to remember that Christmas is not defined by the gifts, or the money, or the digging your car out of the driveway so that you can get to dinner (that has nothing to do with consumerism except that why the hell don't we have a snow blower?) It's about sharing the love and opening the damn cheese ball.

*Grammar Side Note - Do you pronounce "Xmas" as "Christmas" or do you say, "ex-mas" because I have no idea and the pronunciation dictates whether or not I should have used "an" or "a." I pronounce it "ex-mas" so my fellow grammar nazis can leave me alone on this one, okay? Also, I think I have some major comma mistakes happening in this little footnote. My apologies. 

I Hate Halloween

I'm being forced to attend a Halloween party this year and I am a little bit on the unimpressed side. I do not like Halloween. I do not like costumes. I do not like free poisoned candy. I do not like fake blood and organs served on platters.
I don't know when I first discovered my dislike for this day. Maybe I had some bad candy once. Maybe someone chased me with a chainsaw while I was out trick or treating (oh, wait, that DID happen. Every year) or maybe I'm just kind of a wimp (true.) Whatever it is, I don't like Halloween, and I'm quite positive that I never will like it.

Costume Stress
I have very powerful memories of how stressed out I would get about choosing my costume as a kid. What if the other kids thought it was stupid? Picking a costume is a BIG DEAL people! Anyway, despite this stress I believe I usually changed what I wanted to be on the day of Halloween and my mom as forced to deal with helping me pick out a new one. And the thing I finally decided on was usually unbelievably lame. Or that's how I remember it anyway. (Except for when I was a Power Ranger. That was sweet.)

Mask Smell
I don't know if this is actually a real thing or if I've just invented it in my head, but do you notice how disgusting Halloween masks smell? Even new ones, they're all plastic-y and disgusting. But it's the old ones that are the worst. Like, the one that your dad wore to the Halloween dance when he was in grade 10 and for some reason decided to keep. (Or, in my household, the terrifying Brian Mulroney mask that I really hope has seen it's last days.)

It's Scary!
I'm all for scary story reading and I love writing creepy tales, but something about Halloween decorations creeps me right out. I guess I prefer to imagine the scary stuff in my head, instead of having to look at it. That being said...

Halloween movies that aren't scary but it makes me anxious even thinking about them:
- Beetlejuice
- The Addams Family
- Edward Scissorhands
- When Good Ghouls Go Bad (Or really any R.L. Stine film/the Goosebumps TV show. I loved the books though.)

Something about these films just makes my insides crawl around all funny. They're all movies that I first saw when I was little, and probably around the same time. I don't know if there was a life event happening at the time that made my memory of these bad or something, but whatever it was, these movies are ruined for me. I can't do scary movies in general. When I'm forced to watch them I'm quite positive that I barely come out alive. Although I want to know the twists and stuff, I just can't deal with the scary. I'm just not into that kind of entertainment.

Let's get all technical here for a sec. Maybe I'll actually teach you something for once. There are a lot of studies that have been done about sensation seeking (i.e. watching scary movies, roller coasters, etc.) Most of them claim that there are various genetic things going on that make someone interested in sensation seeking or not. (i.e. dopamine levels and personality traits like introversion/extraversion.) I strongly believe that I am genetically hardwired to love sitting at home and typing away on my laptop, scoffing at that dude who just jumped from the edge of space. (If you want me to go into any more details I'd gladly mail you a copy of my psychology textbooks for a small fee of $400.)

Okay, now that we've learned something (that's scary) we can bring this thing to a close. I just wanted to let you all know that for Halloween this year, I'm being cotton candy, the most least scary thing in the whole wide world. And I'm going to go around and spread my non-scary cheer everywhere I go.