MY VIEW: When you’re a natural Scrooge

This article was supposed to be about Christmas traditions and holiday fun.

Low and behold, I am Scrooge. I have an intense distaste for “holiday cheer”. To me, it is not the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas music? Cringeworthy. Christmas lights strung up before Thanksgiving? Please stop. Why is that necessary? Take life one holiday at a time. Walking into Walmart in October and seeing Halloween and Christmas decorations in the same proximity makes my skin crawl. Christmas movies all have the same plot, just different characters. There is always a “Christmas miracle”.

Winter, in general, is not my cup of hot chocolate.

I try to avoid situations where I will be exposed to such monstrosities. When I’m at the mall, where they play the same five songs sung by 15 different country artists, I have earbuds in with my music turned up loud enough to drown out the overplayed tunes.

Decorating should be done the week of Christmas, not two months prior. The lights are pretty, but they get obnoxious. They are also a pain to untangle and put up. It’s not a struggle I personally invest in. Inside decorations and the tree just take up space, in my opinion.

I have friends and family, who enjoy holiday-type movies, and who try to change my mind by making me watch them. I just don’t enjoy the cliché “something-happens-to-split-the-couple-and-by-a-Christmas-miracle-they-get-back-together-and-live-happily-ever-after”. It’s boring. I do, however, watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. Charlie Brown is always cute.

Winter in it’s bone-chilling glory is horrible. I don’t like snow or the cold. Snow is pretty the first day, and then the dirt makes it unsightly. Snowmen are incredibly difficult to make. Frozen lied to us.

While I wasn’t raised in an environment where we went all out this time of the year, that is not the reason I feel this way. We kids used to string lights and garland around our room. I quickly realized this was not my thing. I did not like it. I have never liked Christmas music or movies.

In the future, I don’t see myself changing my ways. If I get married or have a family, and they want to decorate, I won’t tell them no. They can if they want. To each her own, but I probably will not be helping.