This Time of Year

I’ve been to The Alley three nights in a row to shoot pool.

One night was league. One was a Christmas party for an organization I used to work for. Last night was a birthday party. Three different reasons, but every night involved slinging my cue case over my shoulder and leaning into the game.

Side note: my team is getting really fucking good. After several losing seasons, something has shifted. You can feel it. This next season? Yeah. The teams that still think we’re a walk in the park are about to get a rude awakening. This is our year. Just saying.

But that’s not actually what this is about.

Every night I’ve been up there, I’ve also been reminded of how much I fucking hate this time of year.

You know exactly what I mean: The holidays.

Here’s the part that really pisses me off: I used to love them.

Thanksgiving was simple: family, food, breaking bread together. Christmas was about giving. About love. About peace, joy, harmony. Loving your neighbor. Singing carols. Celebrating another lap around the sun together.

Somewhere along the line, all of that got shoved aside for Chinese-made fucking bullshit and a never-ending chorus of buy buy buy. Consumerism took over, and people followed right along behind it.

Now? People are selfish fucking pricks.

They’re rude. They’re toddlers in a giant playpen we call “town” or “the mall” or whatever corporate hellscape they’re currently terrorizing. Instead of spreading goodwill, they’re spreading their fucking legs to take up more space. Instead of loving their neighbor, they’re stealing parking spots and acting shocked when someone’s pissed about it.

The holidays don’t bring out the best in people anymore. They bring out the truth.

And here’s the part people get weird about, so fuck it, let’s just say it out loud: it’s Christmas. Not “the holidays.” Christmas. We don’t need to whisper it like it’s a slur.

You don’t have to be Christian to acknowledge reality. America was founded by Christians, and for a long damn time nobody lost their minds over that fact. Christmas used to have an anchor, something bigger than ourselves, bigger than gifts, bigger than obligation.

When we stripped the religion out of it, we didn’t replace it with kindness or generosity or community. We replaced it with Target. With Amazon. With credit card debt, expectations, and barely contained rage.

Maybe that’s where consumerism really crept in, not because people stopped believing in God, but because they stopped believing in anything that asked them to slow down, reflect, give, or look beyond themselves.

Empty traditions don’t stay empty. They get filled with bullshit.

It’s the same mentality we saw during the pandemic, hoarding everything in sight, then whining about empty shelves. Self above all else. Me first. Always. And I fucking hate it.

I hate every cocksucking motherfucker who thinks pissing off strangers is a small price to pay for some overpriced garbage they “had to get” for junior.

What kills me is that I remember something different.

Growing up in small-town America, we’d bundle up in the Minnesota cold and go door to door with people from church, freezing our asses off while we sang Christmas songs. The payoff wasn’t candy or money, it was the look on people’s faces. Genuine smiles. Warmth. For a moment, you made someone’s day a little lighter.

That was the spirit of Christmas.

Not mobs crashing the doors at Walmart.

I also hate the expectation that comes with modern Christmas. When I was a kid, you didn’t expect anything. You were grateful if you got something, but the real joy was the time off, the atmosphere, the smiles, the feeling that people were actually glad to be alive together.

Now those smiles have been traded for scowls, all in the name of fucking consumerism. And that’s a goddamned tragedy.

People used to seek happiness. Used to create joy when there was none.

Now they hunt for reasons to be mad.

And that… that just fucking sucks.