Bah Humbug -A Holiday Rant

Bah Humbug -A Holiday Rant  (E) A rant about Christmas for a contest #2106276 by Chris Breva

760 words

If there is one thing in life that really singes the hair off my backside it's hypocrisy. Therefore I despise Christmas! I see it as a huge waste of time and energy. It's almost as if some demon someplace was flying over the world at some point and decided to take a dump! I mean we work hard all year long scrimping and scraping to make ends meet. Then beginning at Thanksgiving we lose our common sense and spend every dime we've managed to save throughout the year on gifts for people who wouldn't cross the street and spit on us if we were on fire! So what gives with all that?

Everywhere you go this time of year you have people putting on their Lee-Press-On smiles and saying "Merry Christmas," to you. I don't know why they even bother. You know as well as they do that they couldn't give a rat's behind whether your Christmas is merry or not! I'm just a poor boy from the head of a certain creek we all know very well. All I ever wanted to with my life is write. A writer doesn't make a whole lot of money usually unless they land a major publishing contract with a good marketing strategist. So like most writers I was, am, and likely always will be dirt poor. Then to add insult to injury you go to the bank this time of year and try to borrow enough money to keep up with that rich family down the street. Their child is getting an expensive toy. Their child shares this information with your child. Your child demands the same toy. You want to give it to them so you try to borrow money. The banker turns you down flat. However, the banker doesn't fail to give you a Lee-press-on-smile and wish you a merry Christmas! At this point you have visions of his head exploding as you put your fist through it! How is your Christmas possibly going to be merry if you have no funds to make it that way? Maybe the banker wants to have your child at his house for Christmas?

You walk out of the bank muttering &%$(&^%#$@! under your breath. When you get out there you arrive just in time to see the local towing company pulling your car away because you were in the bank too long. You try to reason with the police officer who gives you a look that would burn water. He tells you where your car will be impounded, what it will cost to get it out of impound, and that the cost doubles every day. With that knowledge he hands you a whopping parking ticket and then says those two little words you know are coming. You got it!" Merry Christmas!"

"Thank you Scrooge,", is the response you believe would be appropriate but you would replace the word "thank" with a much more colorful one! However, you bite your tongue so hard that it bleeds as you try to convince yourself that being Bubba's girlfriend for the next ten years isn't worth what you really want to do!

Now you go to your only remaining option. Your vehicle is in the impound and if it stays there more than a day you know you'll never get it back. The bank won't loan you anything more than a pen to sign your check so you can hand it to them. Your only option at this point is to go to the people you were trying to buy presents for to begin with and grovel at their feet as you beg for help. So you call up your family. You ask first one and then the other for help and get the same dead silence on the other end of the line from each of them. So you have no transportation, no money, and no hope. The only thing your loving family offers to do is see to it that you have transportation to the family get together on Christmas Day. After all they have to make sure you're there so you can watch the hundreds of packages under the tree dwindle down to nothing as one person after another opens everything from vacations in the Bahamas to diamond rings. They finally hand the last gift to you. When you open it you find a huge box with an envelope at the bottom. Opening the envelope you find a Christmas card wishing you a very merry Christmas and an equally screwed up new year!