Unprepared for Christmas? But of course.

He’s ready. Are you?

He’s ready. Are you?

 

Why is it that every year Christmas seems to come out of nowhere? It’s embedded in your calendar. You know that it happens every year, on the same day, just like it always has. It goes on all over the planet and, let’s be honest, it’s been screaming for your attention since July, yelling louder than any other freaking holiday known to man.

Yet somehow, come the 20th of December, I always feel like I’m getting kicked in the ass by Santa once again.

Am I unprepared for Christmas? Yes. Or, as my beloved Magic 8 Ball would say, “It is decidedly so.” With roughly five days until Christmas Eve, I have left every shred of holiday preparation undone. Nothing succeeds like procrastination and no one profits from our lack of holiday readiness like the retail giants that are there to inhale every dollar you can throw at your glorious tardiness. In fact, retailers are now banking on people like me (if they only knew…), targeting last minute consumers by hyping up their speedy shipping methods, inventing last minute sales strategies and doing everything they can to ensure two things: you get your holiday packages on time, and you spend your hard earned desperation cash with them.

This weekend will bring what is now being called, “Panic Saturday.” No, sadly it doesn’t refer to the hazy Widespread shows of yesteryear, but the last Saturday before Christmas when the present buying “panic” is in full bloom. British retailers alone are estimating that the hoards of crazed last minute consumers will spend 2.1 million pounds per minute tomorrow (right about now, I’d say something like, “Imagine the impact that 2.1 million pounds a minute could have on the world,” but it’s a subject so obscene, and the moral deficit so vast, I can’t begin to touch it with my ridiculousness.). That figure alone is panic inducing. According to retailmenot.com, fifty-six percent of shoppers will still be hitting the stores in the coming days and 1 in 5 people haven’t even begun to shop. So, not only am I not alone, I will be greatly out numbered this weekend and I’m guessing they’ll all be carrying some stinky holiday spiced latte to add a festive smell to my sensory experience of being one with humanity.

Amazon, Wal-Mart, Macy’s; judging from their advertisements, they all seem to be willing to lay down in the street and let me roll right over them in the taxi cab I’ll be rushing around in trying to find the ridiculous holiday odds and ends I can’t get shipped to me—Frankincense, Mirth, mistletoe-tinis—so long as they get my business. And why not, they’ve been at this since September. Retailers now begin saturating the market with Christmas décor, holiday products and theme sales so early that, by the week before Christmas, those of us who still don’t have our shit together might as well have a target on our backs. Which, incidentally, is Target’s wet dream.  

Perhaps therein lies the source of my holiday unpreparedness. I begin to mentally zone out as soon as I see the first packages of tinsel and holiday cards on the shelves at the drugstore after Labor Day, the weather not even remotely cold, the leaves on the trees still mostly green, my attitude as ridiculous as ever. By the time the Christmas music starts penetrating the pores of every location in the city—before the Thanksgiving bird is even out of the oven I might add—I’m numb to it. And I remain numb to it like a lamb to the retail slaughter, wandering the streets in a haze of Christmas ignorance (or is it bliss?) for several months, able to pretty much totally block the rising tide of holiday cheer right up until just about now, when it hits me. Oh shit, next week is Christmas.

The retailers of the world and their multi-million dollar advertising machines know their customers. They have me pegged every February 13, July 3rd, October 30th and day before Thanksgiving when I exhibit the same need to throw money into the black hole of last minute holiday preparation that I do before Christmas, only on a much more ridiculous level. Dollar bills, y’all. Dollar, dollar bills. The retail giants start early and don’t let up because they know they’ll get us in the end.

Yes, when push comes to shove, I’m lying in the gutter obsessively tracking packages on my phone with nothing to cling to but my festive, nondenominational wrapping paper. But guess who forgot to buy tape?

Sorry, I didn’t have time to wrap your present, Jesus. It’s a Chia Pet. 

Plant a New Seed

I’m taking it literally this year.

I’m taking it literally this year.

The end of another year always brings the usual litany of year-end wrap ups, lengthy year’s “best” lists and endless reels of clips showing the year’s highlights, as if we have already forgotten what happened three months ago. For some, it can bring closure to a project or a fourth quarter they’re happy to be done with. For others, the end of a year can mean saying goodbye to a productive period of time or formally moving on to the next chapter. Whatever the year’s end signifies, it brings with it one thing above all else, the promise of a new year.

A new year. The year. The year when it all finally happens, when you do it, achieve it, receive it; a year that holds the possibility of being just one big fucking great year.

In preparation for this upcoming, epic year of life, many of us will begin to prepare ourselves. We’ll shake off the past twelve months, and take stock of where we are and where we wanted to be just one short year ago. We will cleanse our minds of what didn’t happen and wipe the life slate clean, preparing to take in the new, hopeful energy that comes with the year’s renewal. Yoga, juice cleanses, martinis, our methodology for slate cleaning is as varied as our life experiences.  

And why not feel the positive energy? This year you’ll celebrate another birthday, another anniversary; have another visit with your brother and your beloved pet pigeon. You’ll get to see your dentist, plumber, gynecologist (insert joke about plumbing and gynecology here), mailman, maybe even get to go on another glorious trip to the DMV. You will go back to that place you love, listen to your favorite Foreigner song once more; hear that one about the priest, the rabbi and the stripper, and laugh harder than you did the first time. This year, you will have an opportunity to do it all again, an opportunity to truly win one for number one.

Resolutions will be made, as they often are in the spirit of renewal. Making a resolution allows us a chance to verbalize a goal, a desire, a need for behavior modification, and attempt to attain it. Some stick with these resolutions, basking in the semi-irritating glow of a goal achieved come December; some slack off on the resolutions, moving on to other necessities by mid-February. There’s no shame in that, you went with the infectious spirit of the season and tried something. Don’t be too hard on yourself in eleven months, there’s always next year to finally stop smoking Phillies Blunts.

So, as you take in the flurry of year-end enthusiasm, remember that it doesn’t have to be the end of a year to make a change. Planting the seeds of positivity and possibility can happen year round, just like being ridiculous. I give you permission to wipe your slate clean anytime you need.

Incidentally, vodka is great for cleaning.