Holidays

I hate the friggin' holidays, all of them...I even have categories.

Let's start with what I like to call the "Am I Off" Holidays, all these little holidays that your work fails to inform you half the time if they are a day off, or not. These holidays are things like Martin Luther King Jr. day or Veteran's Day - it seems especially particular to the two things I'm not - a Veteran of a war, or a black person. Okay, fair enough, but then when you DO get days like those off....

We have the "chore" holidays, these are the days as either a spouse or a teenager, you don't get to relax, it's just a "free day"...TO WORK! That's right, deep clean your house, alphabetize your sock drawer, organize your at home desk, clean up those 1080 leftover e-mails you never read and delete them. So instead of the much needed "relaxation" day, you get a day where you just get to stress out or continue your descent into a deeply-dead-feeling burnout And of course, isn't it great there's always going to be some thing you need that you don't have, that the store has, but the store is fucking closed! So you have to skip it. And if you have someone in your life whose bitchy and think's you're a lazy ass full of excuses, warranted or not, they think the fact xx store is closed for what you need for xx "chore day" project is just an excuse not to get things done. For fuck sake, is that all human life is now...is work?

Then there's the "fun if you are a kid" holidays. Easter was fun, getting a grass basket full of eggs and chocolates and gifts, it was a gift giving holiday, but not a major one (for the most part). But I'm sure as a parent - because thank heavens I'm #childfree by choice - I can't even begin to imagine the nightmarish hell of being either a penny pinching parent, or a parent with a child who has the finding skills of King Kong if he was as deaf, dumb, and blind as the rock opera Tommy! Finding random eggs all over the house, some popped open - oh great, fucking lego into your foot! Ohh, there's that Micro Machine he really wanted I swore I bought and spent half a Fort Knox on so he'd shut the fuck up about bloody Monster Jam!

Then there's "Halloween" - when I was growing up, this holiday was fun as fuck! Dress up as whatever fun thing you want and role-play all friggin day long. Then go out in the evening, get a bunch of candy, eat that candy till you get sick and spend some time in the toilet like a drunk who just spent six hours at the bar with fun friends. Then you grow up, and it's either you be a part of the sexy couple everyone knows is enjoying a night of Donkey Kong banging Elvira and "doin' tha' freak" or otherwise, unless the costume is some excuse to partake in whatever goofey fetish you have, it's childish, immature, and you're probably a predator because of it! And if you're the regular adults handing out candy, you get to get conned by the sneaky, greedy brats. Ever watched some rat bastard kid run off with the whole Candy bowl in a fittingly appropriate Donald Trump costume!?!? Well that put an end to Halloween like he's putting and end to America.

Then there's the gift giving holidays.....

Let's start at the worst - VALENFUCKINGTINESDAY!!!!! I HATE VALENTINES DAY!!!

When you're single, Valentine's day is like a constant reminder of your horny, single, lonely existence while other people do public display's of affection while the go out and drink their heart shaped lattes on their way to the lingerie store. It's the day of putting in noise cancelling headphones because your apartment becomes the auditory porno show you didn't want! You got people bangin' all around, and here you are, sitting in your apartment, trying to tune that obnoxious shit out, or probably nowadays you lucky young adults get to hook up on grinder/mingler/binder/bingler/bumble/stumble/rumble/pumple...or whatever those apps are, and then bang to your hearts content no strings attached.

But oh, it doesn't get fixed when you're in a relationship either!!!

If you're in a relationship, now the heat is on to meet all the other's expectations. Now I apologize in advance because this comes from a perspective of a straight, CIS gender, male....I don't know what it's like for the rest of you, but I have ideas...just not sure how accurate I can be.

Basically, the expectation of most women in my just-barely-limited experience is that she has some grand expectation, tells you about 4 different "stories" of what she expects or wants, and it's your job, as a man, to guess the roulette, and then brace for the disappointment when the shell game you lift up turns up empty.

And if you DO manage to pull off something epic - or try to at least - the florist sends dead flowers, the venue can't find your CONFIRMED reservation, the tickets didn't arrive on time, there's no fucking parking, and she's dissappointed because you like her naked body better than some $200 lingerie her single divorcee friend thought would be the reason you got her hot. Uh, fuck no, I like you for you, not an overpriced piece of fucking lace! Somehow this is something corporate conditioning in America has done a great job of to fuck relationships.

Or how about today's soup de' jour...BIRTHDAYS

When it's YOUR birthday as a kid, you can think of about 100 pages of the Sears wishlist catalog to ask for that you didn't get for Christmas, even if it's a few months after. But as an adult.....especially if by some miracle you managed to be somehow gainfully employed in a system that mostly exploits the average person for a shitty wage, you can buy anything you want, and the one thing you want, is to rest, and sleep, and not argue with your significant other. But the questions come - just like Christmas...."what do you want"?

This year, FINALLY someone got the message, and I basically spent my days sleeping, reading books, and playing video games. First time I felt relaxed in a very, very very long time. But all the years before "oh, let's go out and go through this big complex rigamarole of socially degrading and diminishing returns because IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY....you GOTTA do SOMETHING COOL!!!".

But when it's someone else's birthday, my god, you have to worry about fucking EVERYTHING! The gifts, the plans, and of course, it's a disaster every time.

Which lines up with the same problems called "the Holidays" - you know, that time of year cancel culture/woke/political correctness basically says you can't say the chosen holiday of your personal religion even in your own fucking home because it's going to somehow offend someone, even if they aren't there and won't ever be there? For me, even though I don't believe in much of anything anymore, it's CHRISTMAS!

Ah yes, just like Easter, Christmas is a holiday that's lost all it's meaning to everyone, but nobody wants to admit it because they will just go to hell, either that or you likely voted red, selectively quote bible verses, and are probably covering up for some kind of considerable vice.

As a kid, it's more awesome than the birthday because corporate consumer culture! The parents spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on your spoiled ass so that you'll stop pestering them for a computer, Nintendo, car, iPad, iPhone, iWatch, or some other expensive thing made in a Chinese sweatshop that steals your data and tries to sell more useless shit to you over the internet using that data, and then today gives you an A.I. assistant to be your "fwiend". As a kid, it's awesome, as an adult, I don't know how there aren't parents with pitchforks and torches at the Apple Store or the Tesla Dealership ready to send Elon Musk or Tim Cook to oblivion!

As an adult, with kids, how do you parents do it? I'm a childfree man married to a childfree woman and even THAT is stressful. She's got to stress asking me 10000 times for what I want, and then whatever I want is either unrealistic, immature, or something she thinks I already have but don't, or is just too bloody fucking expensive henceforth I don't expect it at all anyway. Sleep? Oh yeah, it's CHRISTMAS, gotta' be with the fam! Money? Naw, that's tacky and too easy.

Then comes the "Drinking Holidays" - New Years being the WORST of them. 4th of July is fucking noisy, but it peter's out by 2 a.m. once I start hearing sirens after people start blowing their fingers off after a bottle and a half of shooting vodka all night long. But The worst of it is when the co-workers either take the day off, or come in hungover the day after, and of course, it's GOT to be a shitshow that day at the same time. The whole while, my sober, non-drinking ass has to listen to some quasi-alcoholic go off the rails at work about the most simple stuff....yet somehow I'm "overreacting" when someone screws the pooch.

Fuck the holidays - I think there should be ONE, National Sleeping Day. BTW, whatever happened to the Indy 500 on Memorial day? And it happens at least one day a year, and you do whatever you want, just don't bother the other working stiffs trying to recover from their constant grind all year long! Maybe if we can burn this whole wretched system down, maybe then I might be more open to holidays, but until then...gift me, LET ME SLEEP! (drops mic)

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anonymous Other March 04, 2026 at 11:49 pm 0 0