+++ SPOILER ALERT!+++
This article contains high doses of sarcasm and hilarity. The author assures that no Santa’s little helpers were harmed in the process of writing this article.
Christmas is coming and the most difficult time of the year starts for me. Well. One of.
The world is full of twinkling lights, snow is invading the streets, the air smells like gingerbread and everyone feels this festive atmosphere and tries to be nicer. Then there is me, totally out of love for December, who can hardly bear the stress of picking up presents, seeing red everywhere, eating so much, smiling and walking in the humid, cold, freezing weather. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that one of my nicknames within my family is the Grinch. I am aware that most of you will roll your eyes and call the stone-cold heart police, but I will try to explain my point of view, trying to find some allies too. I know that out there there are some We (H)ate Santa clubs and, confident to find some pals, here is the list of reasons why I hate Christmas.
Presents. When I was a child, I thought that all the letters I was sending to Santa’s home in Rovaniemi got lost. I mean. I was asking for Barbie’s camper, a pony and a telescope and I always received clothes, clever games, puzzles. Growing up, I thought I had put behind my bad relationship with the fat bearded guy, but I did not take into account how bad people are at gift-giving. Actually, it is really easy. You think about the person, you visualize what s/he likes the most, you find/create/buy it, you wrap it, you give it to the person, the person is happy. No rocket science, one may think. Then, how can you explain the fact that I am still receiving books I will never read, clothes I will never wear or weird memorabilia destined to be covered in dust?
Breakups. Statistically*, the best moment to break up with someone is a couple of weeks before Christmas. Why? Because the money you would have spent with/for your better half, you can spend for yourself. Imagine instead being left in front of the vegetables section of a mall on the 24th of December because your soon-to-be-ex boyfriend is a vegan and he wants to spend Christmas alone (read: no strings attached). Or to declare your love for the first time to another soon-to-be-ex boyfriend and the guy, instead of romantically jumping towards you for a kiss, answers that he has been seeing someone else for quite some time. No wonder I have spent some major depressing Christmases eating gelato and listening to Damien Rice’s Delicate in loop. Now I live in terror of being left on the altar right before Christmas’ Eve. What do you mean, I don’t have a boyfriend?
*By statistically, of course we mean our second reality: Facebook.
Family dinners. When are you graduating? When are you getting married? When are you going to introduce us your boyfriend/girlfriend? When are you going to move out of your parents’ house? Have you ever received one of these questions? If the answer is yes, congratulations: you are part of the 99% of youngsters who are constantly oppressed by relatives. The only solution to avoid these (and more) questions is to avoid family dinners, with the only result to add more and more questions the very next time you will seat together. Obviously, if you never received those questions, you are not the “black sheep” of the family and you should help your relatives in peril and not laugh at them. In 20-something years of my life, I have never found some plausible excuses to use in order to avoid spending the entire lunch mumbling something even remotely intelligible. Dear readers, any suggestion is welcome. XOXO, a single girl from Italy.
Michael Boublé is coming to town. There was a time when Michael Bublé was famous because he was a singer even besides Christmas. Or maybe not. We will never know. But during Christmas time, he probably holds the record for the highest number of copies sold. In fact, during the whole month of December, apparently the entire archives of all the radios in the world misteriously disappear and they are replaced with only festivities-themed songs.
Everybody, and when I say everybody I literally mean everybody, recorded a Christmas song. From the usual All I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey to the usual Last Christmas by Wham!. But there are some hidden gems that are more suitable for destroying someone’s joyful day than for creating the right mood. Some example? It’s Christmas time again by Backstreet Boys, Mistletoe or Santa Claus is coming to town by Justin Bieber, The Christmas Shoes by NewSong, Don’t shoot me Santa from The Killers and, dulcis in fundo, Santa Claus goes straight to the getto by Snoop Doggy Dogg. One might say that Bublé is not the worst medicine after all. Well… try to fly from Warszawa to Rome with his greatest hits album on repeat because some nice hostess forgot to press stop, and then we can talk about it; provided you did not jump off the plane at 33,000 ft. Which is more or less the reaction I have when listening to Christmas songs.
Christmas is during winter. I am a daughter of Spring, when the nice weather is bringing new lymph to the world; which is exactly the antithesis of the cold, freezing, foggy season normally called winter. Look at Australians or New Zealanders who understood everything in life, placing Christmas during the hot season. 
No snow, no ice, just sand, beaches and a mojito with Santa in a swimsuit. Instead, we are forced to cover ourselves like onions, spending at least one hour to remove every single layer of clothes. To make things worse, when I try to go out of my house I am bombed by so many lights that it is a miracle half of the population is not blind. Other senses are challenged as well, like taste and smell, mostly with a common enemy: cinnamon and ginger. Is someone able to explain to me why those two spices are blooming during Christmas season? What is wrong with sage or rosmary?
On a deeper level, though, Christmas is also the moment when all the family gets together, when I get to see long-distance friends, when it is time to think back on the year that just passed, when you are never alone because there is always someone by your side, when it is time to go to the cinema with you brother and your sister, when the heart is lighter, when grandpa is giving you a Christmas gift from his hospital bed and his smile is just heaven, when you eat so much you can die, when you can give to the poor something you will not use anymore, when you are just happy with your loved ones.
Ok… all in all, I think I can survive this Christmas too. Hopefully, next year I will be surfing with Santa.
Merry Christmas to all!
Written by Ebenezer Scroogerika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona