Christmas embargo

Halloween’s been here, and now Christmas is about to hit us over the head.I want a year off Xmas.  I want a Christmas moratorium this year.  I find it stressful and distracting- an obligation to get people stuff and go to gatherings I don’t really want to.      More turkeys are sacrificed needlessly and the psychic noise of credit card debt, guilt, inadequacy and stress escalates.There are good things.  It’s nice to have a reason to get together with some people, and it’s nice to have a landmark for the year.  Otherwise, years could slide by fused together without distinction.  Eggnog is awesome, and those Cadbury’s oranges you have to smash apart are pretty exciting.  I love making things to give away.   I always enjoy Christmas when I spend it with my family, but this year I probably won’t.It just seems like Christmas is too much.  And why is it such a big production every year?  It can be a big production, say, every three years, that would be cool.  And the other two years it can have one day of attention and you can kind of wave in Christmas in passing as you carry on getting stuff done and staying in bed watching movies.I want to call a time out, or have some other anti-Xmas gesture that I can spring on anyone who wants to invite me over for turkey death that says unequivocally and non-verbally: “Temporary relief from Christmas now claimed!  Speak’st thou not of Yule!  This person is not participating in Christmas; find something else to talk about!”Instead of something as neutral as pointing the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other, though, I would favour clutching one’s throat, making gagging sounds, rolling the eyes back in the head, and then falling forward to the knees and collapsing sideways, twitching.  That’s the universal anti-Xmas signal right there.  Let’s all adopt it!