I usually refer to the Great Christmas Shopping Push from October to December as “Cashmas”. It isn’t the slightest bit about celebrating the holiday season, it’s about getting your money.
Buy a tree. Buy decorations. Spend a fortune on rellos you hardly ever see because it’s that time of year and you have to show them you care and why not use that credit card until it smokes?
Yeah. How about fuck off?
I have rellos who are hard to shop for at the best of times. Thanks to obstreperous neighbours, this is not one of those times. I almost have zero money [MeMum bailed me out and I insist on only spending that cash on needs, not wants] and difficult rellos.
My usual yuletide fallback of gingerbreads for everyone, or Molasses cake-bikkies, has fallen over because sugar’s on a whole bunch of folks’ verboten food lists. Sigh.
So the one high point of my current fix is that I haven’t been going to the shops a lot. Why is this a high point?
Cashmas Carols.
From October until January, all you hear is twenty-seven squillion versions of every last Christmas song there is. Some of them are nice enough, but most of them just make my blood boil.
One year, I was trapped in the zombie shopping herd and subjected to hours of every last rendition of The Little Drummer Boy. To this day, even one phrase of it will make me twitch.
Another year, they insisted on every last Christmas Song For Charity. In a row. Feed the World was right next to a song for the kiddies whose Christmas got wrecked by a cyclone in Darwin. When I was FIVE.
In yet another year, I was tortured by every last rendition of Winter Wonderland. This in a country where the summer heat sucks the soul out of you in less than a second, should one dare to step outside of the AC.
This year, in so far as I can tell, it’s Reggae Christmas Hits mixed with the world’s most annoying and whiny singers warbling atonally up and down the scales at every last opportunity and a few that didn’t exist before.
All I Want For Christmas is You is not a dirge, people!
Cashmas shits me off.
I do my utmost not to support it.
And every year, they make it so easy to do so.