Snow on the ground, Christmas carols playing, and a spiked hot chocolate in my frozen fingers which I can no longer feel due to a combination of the cold and the Bailey’s Whiskey. It’s that time of year again. ‘Tis the season to have your life choices mocked at the dinner table and to watch your neighbors hang an excessive amount of lights as if to scream, “I can Christmas harder than your non-festive ass.”
Don’t get me wrong, the Holidays are a great time, as long as you’re not politically correct enough to actually call Christmas “The Holidays.” But when forced to leave the booze-ridden sex romp that is college and return to your parent’s house, one can’t help but notice a few flaws with the season. Flaws that, I’m convinced, coined the idea of drinking before you go out to drink.
For starters, you don’t just return to your parents and siblings. You also return to fifteen aunts and uncles, not to mention those well dressed and properly spoken old timers who you can’t actually remember how you’re related to — and to all of whom you have to say, “No, I’m not seeing anyone.” You thought you were happy with being single until you hear your grandma explain through a veil of judgment and pity that she was already engaged at your age. Hey, at least your cousins are there to help you sneak a shot or seven of vodka into the soda you’re clutching in your depressingly ring-less hand. Don’t get to down on yourself, though. Even Kim Kardashian was unmarried for 293 days this year.
Family functions aside, you get to go home to all of your old friends from high school. Assuming you haven’t already come to the realization that you hate everyone you used to hang out with, you see all the people you used to gossip about before they became slightly irrelevant. Now you’re back, and while it takes zero effort to love them, it still takes a fifth of vodka to tolerate them. At least you get to relive your teens by hooking up with the kid you used to resort to “watch movies” with in your parent’s basement. That’s when you truly learn that Christmas is the season of giving, because it is three years later and that kid still hasn’t learned shit about the female body. Meanwhile, you’re going down faster than Facebook stock. Fa La La La La, La Fuck My Life.
After deciding to confine your social circle to the eight or so people who you can still tolerate (and who still tolerate your judgmental ass), you still have to go Christmas shopping. This shit was so much easier when you were little and all you had to do was wrap up a shitty painting or something, and your parents were like “Aw, that is so sweet!” When I was a little kid I used to actually steal my family’s shoes, wrap them up, and give them as gifts on Christmas morning. So it would be a week before December 25th and no one would have any shoes and they’d be like, “Well, looks like Lucy finished all her goddamn Christmas shopping.” Now I’m an adult and I still don’t have a job, but that’s no excuse because I should be actually doing something with my life. Screw it, I’ll get a job once I recover from my mysterious ailment that only effects me during working hours. I think an employer would be lucky to have me if they needed stuff looked up on Wikepedia or something.
Get excited for New Years, though. If you’re lucky you’ll get a few party invitations, and you can assess which will have the best booze and which will have the worst people. But at the end of the day, every invitation might as well read, “Come get drunk and cry while your friend pukes in the bathroom!” That’s exactly what’s going to end up happening. At least you get to drink something classier than Natty when resolving to make better bad decisions next year, and realizing that it’s been a whole year since you didn’t become a better person. Here’s to the end of another shitty year that you’ll one day be weirdly nostalgic for.
I bid everyone good luck as you finish your finals and head home for a few weeks. I, for one, cannot wait to be ashamed for what I’ve done over break. I hope you have the best holiday that a barely functioning member of society can possibly hope for, and you have half as much fun as you’ll pretend to be having in your Facebook pictures. My condolences to Santa for having to fully review the fucked up shit you did this year when inevitably checking your name on the naughty list.