Bah, Hum-bug!

I hate Christmas.

There, I said it.

Don't get me wrong... I love spending time with family and friends, I love watching C.J. open his gifts, and then play with the boxes. I love eating too much, wondering where we are going to put all of this new cra-... I mean, stuff we will get, looking at the lights, watching football...

I love all that stuff.

But I hate Christmas.

Bah, freaking Hum-bug.

Thursday night/Friday morning, my Wife and I stood in a line at least two-thousand people long (guess which end of it we were in?) outside Toys-R-Us to take advantage of the door buster sales (or get taken advantage of by the door buster sales, as the case may have been.) When we managed to wrestle the things we wanted away from the rest of the mob, we stood in line again, this time for nearly three hours, before we made it to one of the three cash registers to check out.

But, hey... We saved almost $60.00.

Then, we went across town to Kohl's, and repeated the process.

And then at Sears, and Home Depot, and by the time we got to Guitar Center, my Wife was too tired to spend any more time shopping, and we grabbed what we came for, and went home.

She says we saved a lot of money, but it sure seems like there is a lot of money missing from the bank account... I'm starting to question the definition of the term "saving money"...

Friday night we went to the Holiday Festival of Lights on James Island (Which was actually the Holiday festival of Traffic Jam.) More waiting in line, only this time in the car. And it wouldn't have been so bad, except that our car has a leaky heater core, so we saw the lights through a foggy windshield in a cold car that smelled like hot anti-freeze.

And I would get the heater core fixed, except that we spent whatever extra money we might have had on- well, you know what we spent it on.

Bah, Hum-bug.

Today, I was roused from my nap, and told that it was time to put up the Christmas decorations, so I had to get out of my nice warm bed, and climb up onto the very crown of the top of the roof to hang up lights that I will soon have to climb right back up there to take back down.

Sure are pretty, aren't they, Honey?

Beautiful!

Interesting footnote about these particular Christmas lights... They are the ones we had last Christmas in Spring Hill. So, I had to store them last year, pack them up and moved them to a storage warehouse in Spring Hill when we moved out of that house, and then bring them to Charleston and store them here, and then find them today and put them up. So these particular lights have not only been in my way for a couple of years now, but I have unpacked and repacked them, carried them up into the attic and back down again, rented storage space for them, rented a truck to haul them in, stumbled over and around them when there was no good place to put them, and now, climbed up on the roof to hang them up today.

The time, effort, money, and dangerous, hard work that would have been saved if they had never existed in the first place is staggering.

And I haven't even started with the Christmas Tree yet. That thing is going to be a monumental pain in the lower apparatus this year.

C.J. is two. The quickest way to get him to constantly bother something until it is completely destroyed is to tell him to leave it alone. I hope he doesn't become a victim of domestic violence because of the Christmas tree, but I don't know. (I can't make any promises about his Mama...)

(Just kidding.)

Anyway, enjoy Christmas while you've got it.

It will be much different after I come to power.

My Christmas policy will be a Birthday cake with "Happy Birthday Jesus" on it, you sing the song, and then watch the game.

No more of this tree-shopping-gift giving-hanging up lights Hogwash.

If you want to celebrate more than that, you can read Luke chapter 2, vs.1-20.

Merry freaking Christmas.