Am I the only one who dreads the holidays?

Specifically Christmas? Is dreading Christmas just a thing that happens as you get older? I got over my childlike delight many MANY years ago, but I still liked it okay well into adulthood because for a long time I had young kids in the family. Now they're getting older too and pretty much just want gift cards and whatnot, so that takes a lot of fun out of shopping for them. And I have a grandmother whose main role at Christmas is to make us all uncomfortable with her terrible and unnecessary gifts.

I'm lucky in one way - I like (not just love) my parents and get along with them pretty well, and they love my partner and make her feel like part of the family when she goes down there with me.

But more and more these days I'd be happy to just skip late November through late December every year.

I worked retail for 11 years.


So… yes I do too.

#firstworldproblems

I still work retail, so its not really a time of year I look forward to. But even if I didn't have that issue, I don't think it would mean much. It really is a children's holiday, so if you don't have any kids to live through I don't think its any different from other party opportunities.

I like Christmas. It's a real family time. It's going to be weird this year as all my grandparents are now dead so I'll see a lot less of my aunts and uncles. I guess the next step of weirdness will be when I find someone to spend it with other than my family/parents.

I can see how it would be less important in America though. Partly because of the diversity of religions and also because you have Thanksgiving as the time to be around family and stuff yourselves silly. Christmas here is the main turkey eating time.

I worked at Michaels Arts and Crafts during the holidays for three years. You wouldn't BELIEVE the places I found glitter after unloading the Christmas merchandise. I still love the holidays though, mostly because I love spending time with family and finding awesome gifts for everyone.

I don't mind visiting the family and friends, I don't really see them enough as is, it's just the traveling that I really hate. And on long trips (I often spend a week or more for Christmas) I get anxious about getting back home, not because I'm sick of the company but probably just from being away from my usual hermit-like ways for so long.

I haven't worked in retail in close to 15 years, and the sound of Christmas carols still sets me on edge

my mother is the worst person to ever have any holiday with ever.
luckily (????????), i'll be spending it with the bf this year. yyyaaaayyyy???????????????????????
gifts from anyone that isn't related make me freak out and feel like i owe them for the rest of my life

i hate the holidays so much you don't even know

Last year was the first time in a very long time I didn't have to work retail over Christmas. It was mostly ruined by the PTSD over the retail life.

However, this year I have a 1 year old nephew. I'm going to buy him so many toys that'll piss off his mom it'll be awesome!

This year will just be my wife & I, been a long time since we had a Christmas without extended family. Eid ul-Fitri though we went with the normal cast of thousands in Java.

Main drawback/ advantage of a bi-cultural marriage - you have to stuff your face with festive food multiple occasions a year, and it does burn a lot of vacation time!

But no, I don't dread them.

I love Christmas. So much I take an extra week of work in early December to bake and do stuff with the kids. I worked retail for 10 years and loved working on Christmas. Most were done shopping, so some came to the game store to escape and others doing their last shopping were grateful for the help we gave - and it gave me a perfect excuse for not helping my mother getting the house ready.

Now it's the one time of year where three generations get together.

I've gotta confess, I like Christmas. I like giving people presents, basically. It's fun to watch them open stuff. It's been especially fun since my niece got old enough to enjoy presents. (Her first two Christmases doesn't count, as she spent more time playing with the wrapping paper.) But I liked it even before there were any kids in the family.

I hear you! I like Christmas well enough, but can't listen to a lot of modern carols any more thanks to my time in retail, even though that time was eons ago. We listen to classical Christmas music, mostly. The Charlie Brown Christmas album is okay, too.

Here is a list of every good thing to ever have come out of Christmas:

1) Die Hard.

2) The Ventures Christmas album.

3) The Phil Spector Christmas album.

THAT'S IT.

Did I ever tell you guys about the last time I was ever inside a Catholic church? I was fifteen, and I was at a party at a friend's house who's parents often held a big Xmas bash. This year, they let their daughter (my friend) invite her friends, so we all showed up. That was when I discovered it is possible to spike a punch bowl without it actually tasting like alcohol - something I found out after I had had about ten glasses of the stuff in a couple hours and was now insanely drunk.

Everybody else I came with was also drunk, and we all collectively had the AWESOME IDEA to go to midnight mass. We started to cut across the park in the snow to the church, and somehow I quickly managed to lose everybody I was with (or they lost me, whichever) and ended up alone at the steps of the church, still craaaaaaaazy drunk, at midnight. By this time I was freezing so I waltzed in and, in my drunken haze saw that my parents and my sister were already there.

So with a big "HELLO!!!!", I sashayed my way to the pew and sat down very, very loudly. I was seeing approximately eight candles for every one by this point. I picked up the hymnal, which was a solid hardcover book, and immediately dropped it flat on the ground - BAM! "Whoops!" I said too loudly, and immediately dropped it AGAIN - BAM! At which point I started giggling.

My father, not a dumb man, leaned over and "Holy cow, you're drunk!" My sister leaned over and said "Oh my god, are you drunk?" My Mom looked at me and said "OH MY GOD ARE YOU SICK????"

At this point, I began to realize that I was indeed not feeling very well. So I latched on to the last thing. "Yes! Yes, I am sick! I am not feeling well! Perhaps I shall go to the bathroom!" My Dad heartily agreed.

The bathroom was in the basement. After very nearly killing myself on the stairs, I made it to the bathroom right as the realization hit me that I was, indeed, about to be sick. Very, very, very sick. Explosively. But I was wearing some pretty nice clothes, and I didn't want to get any puke on 'em, so I had the logical idea to take off all of my clothes before heaving into the toilet. Which took about twenty minutes, but eventually I there I was, naked and dry heaving into a church bathroom.

At that point in my life, I wasn't hip to the idea of just making yourself throw up when you're in that state. (Something I would have AMPLE opportunity to learn later in life.) So by the time I was actually throwing up, the sermon had started. Now, at the time, my parish had a pretty old priest. He wasn't the fastest speaker in the world, and would take long pauses. So according to my father, here's what everybody heard during the sermon:

Priest: "Christ compels us to be kind to each other....."

Me: "FRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK-CK-CK JESUS GOD OH GODDDDBRRRRRUUUUUUUUAAAAAAACKCKCKCKCK!"

Priest: "His light will show us...."

Me: "ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK-BRAAAAAAAAAAAAPUH PUH PUH!"

Priest: "... the way."

At the end of the mass, my Dad came down to find me in the bathroom, naked, coughing up foam and bits of my stomach into the toilet. To his credit, he took it all in and didn't say a word about the nakedness. What he did say to me was - and I will never forget this - "Today, son... You are a man."

"TAKE ME HOME YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

And that was the last time I was ever in a Catholic church.

I'm not in retail, but definitely have a work crunch around the holidays, as people are getting their tax situation in order. It sucks all the joy out of the season. I used to love throwing holiday parties and baking and making and giving gifts. Now I just work and stress.

The actual holiday has been delightful because my family basically quit Christmas. My immediate family has gone to Puerto Rico for the last couple years. We sit on a beach for two weeks and eat a lot of pernil. No more stressful family gatherings.

I love the holidays because personally I'm decidedly "meh" on them, however, I get immense pleasure out of doing things like going to the mall, sitting down on a bench somewhere or in the food court and watching all the other crazy people run around.

I dig the holidays because hey, it's free time off work. Gift-giving is easy, I have the rule that if I haven't had dinner with you this year, you don't get a present. (Secret Santa exempted)

Reminds me that I need to check when the Plaza Lights ceremony is this year. It's a big thing in KC when they officially turn on the Christmas lights in our big outdoor commercial area, sounds mundane as hell but it's always a big social event.

Even though I worked retail for years and years, I still like the holidays. I don't like the extra traffic and insanity that people work themselves into, but I enjoy the gatherings.

I hated Christmas when I worked in retail, and now that I'm out I love it again. I try to get all my shopping done early so I can have a low-key December just doing the fun stuff and not worrying about shopping. Black Friday is my big indulgence day: I sleep in, I bake cookies, I play video games, and I DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE.

I look forward to the days off work (which I'll probably supplement by taking the 3rd and 4th of January off, since Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year). I dread the incredibly tedious French Canadian Christmas party I have to attend every year with my girlfriend's family. All the big burly Francophones and their women, yelling and drinking and occasionally staring at the awkward English guy like I just arrived from planet Computer Geek. What fun.

I am all-in on Christmas. Lights, music, shopping, fireplace, candles, gifts, snow (yeah, right), drinks, food, ALL OF IT GIVE ME MORE.

Except parties. Shoot me now.

Pro tip: live only near your immediate family, and have no friends. It works like a charm!

I will say that when I was a kid it was a family tradition to go see a movie on Thanksgiving and Christmas. As an adult, I realize that it means people have to work and have thus shifted my Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions to ones that don't require other people to work.

Oh, don't worry, I've got the "no friends" part locked down tight. Co-workers, relatives, my wife's friends, haven't quite eliminated them all yet.

See, I take the absolute opposite approach. Live near your friends and keep relatives half a continent away.

I like the holidays, but it's a careful mix of treading lightly through hip-deep family drama and financial stress. If I can do my best to avoid those things, the holidays work out just fine. Of course, I wake up New Year's Day and feel like I've got a hangover from all that stress in the last month, but being a shut-in and not doing much in January helps with that.

As a beneficiary of this policy, I will stipulate to it being the absolute best. We are actually sticking around through Christmas Day this year, but since we've been away the past few years my family has scaled back their activities a bit anyway so it should be too much.

I wouldn't say I dread the holidays, but I do approach them with a weird mix of excitement and trepidation. I like seeing my immediate family and even checking in with my extended family, but the demands are just too much sometimes. Christmas is mostly solved by now but Thanksgiving and Easter are a different story. In fact, last Thanksgiving we got a bunch of shit from my mom for not making the trek from my aunt's brunch to my mom's dinner fast enough (we got there an hour and a half before dinner instead of four hours), and then when we did get there half of the people in attendance were just some random neighbors. That's the part I kind of do dread. I don't mind spending holidays with the special people in my life--that's what they're for--but I don't want to be made to spend them with a bunch of acquaintances and strangers, which seems to happen as often as not.

I gave you a Like because I'm in the same boat, albeit indirectly - I work for a tax software provider, so our biggest releases are in November and December. (We just cut our first 2012 release CD yesterday and our download goes live to users on Sunday night.) So it's the busiest part of the year at a job that is increasingly busy throughout the entire year - we used to have a busy 'season' and now we joke about how there's no 'season' anymore, unless it's busier season.

So, to answer jerri blank - it's not so much that I dread the holidays for the holidays themselves, but that for the past 10+ years I haven't really had time to enjoy them. I'm generally working 10-12 hour days from October - January and coming into the office most weekends. I'm exhausted for months at a time and have precious few days to myself to rest and recharge, so things like Christmas shopping and family gatherings are, sadly, just added stress at a time when I'm already stretched too thin.

As I mentioned in the Walmart thread, there are plenty of people who appreciate the extra revenue and specifically volunteer to work holidays, and there are also plenty of industries that run 24/7 and have to have people there no matter what. My dad volunteered to work Thanksgiving and Christmas every year for years, he got a nice bit of extra money for it.

Same here. Back in my behind-the-counter wage slave days, I'd always volunteer to work holidays. Which means I would end up working graveyard shifts at convenience stores on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. People would come in and go, "Oh, it so sad you have to work on Christmas Eve!" and I'd think "Normally I'd agree with you, but this is still better than being with my family."

Yeah, I get that people volunteer and like the extra money. But not all places pay extra, and my experience at movie theaters has largely been people who are openly hostile and unhappy to be working the holiday. We just rent movies instead.

Holidays of any kind make me unspeakably grumpy and out of sorts. I'm not even sure why, my family are lovely people. I just inevitably end up desperately wishing I was at home, preferably sleeping in my bed, rather than... around... people.

When I was in the deepest depths of my depression, this was me. It does get better!

When I was in the deepest depths of my depression I couldn't even handle talking to my parents on the phone once a week.

I have mixed feelings about the holidays.

I love the season and all of its trappings and I love to celebrate it with my husband and daughter.

It is also a very sad season for my side of the family and my mother would prefer to just skip December all together. When I was 23 my oldest brother was diagnosed with small cell cancer that had spread from his lungs to his spine and he was not expected to make it through the month. That was how we spent Christmas of 93. Chemo did work and he got another 4 years of life before a brain tumor that is often the side effect of that type of chemo finaly got him on Dec. 12 of 97.

So yeah, mixed bag.

I love Christmas! I love the claymation/animation stuff, except the one Raife posted...that one is lame. But I love Rudolph....both of them. I love Jack Frost, and the Santa ones. All those Rankin and Bass or whatever the hell. The movie Christmas Story...I need to drive past that house this year. I love the colors and the lights! I love Thanksgiving with the turkey and the squash casserole.

Plus, it's the only time of the year I see my family really. I live far away, and they live in the deep south, so it's too hot to visit in the Summer!

Anyway, all the decorations and stuff still remind me of beautiful childhood memories.

I enjoy the holidays, although I admit that now that they involve cross-country travel I find myself really, really wishing for teleportation technology. We usually do Thanksgiving in CA, as Ingmar vastly prefers his family's version over mine (and I tend to agree, their turkey is much better and it's just a much bigger Event than my family's) (their stuffing sucks nut, though), and Christmas in NJ, because Christmas here in California just feels all kinds of wrong. The weather is wrong, we can't have a tree because our cats are evil, and I get deeply, deeply homesick.

Plus my birthday is December, so skipping the holiday season would mean skipping that too!

I must confess: I hate that movie with every fiber of my being. Always have, ever since I was a kid. It comes on the TV and I want to punch that kid in the face so hard he lands in an Easter Story.