Tis' The Season To Be Broke

Christmas is peeking her delicate head from around the corner, and I'm not too keen on seeing her come. In early November, when my grocery store set up darling Christmas lights, I almost threw up in my mouth. This is because a.) life is rushed so darn fast and just when I'm realizing what's happening the moments become the past and b.) The only thing that Christmas symbolizes is the American twenty dollar bill. We might as well replace our Christmas trees with giant money blown up from an elaborate money enlarging machine. Christmas is about family, and about love, and about "what you got me," and about "why you didn't get me the thing that I asked for," and the "you must not love me if you didn't have to sell your first child to purchase my Christmas present."I become so disgruntled when I am presented with the obsession of gift giving and getting, that I want to slap people with candy canes. Even better, I find myself desiring to get under my covers and watch re-runs of The Wonder Years, eat popcorn, and keep Christmas on the outside of my room for as many years as possible. This interesting though mostly crazy thought occurs because of how we have twisted the concept of gifts. We call gifts gift cards, Ipod covers with extra bling, silver necklaces with our names, ties. Does the world really need a Christmas full of more ties?

The real gifts are:
watching your significant other cook breakfast in their underwear
smelling patchouli when you hug someone
counting the hairs on someone's arm
making a baby laugh really hard by making noises
Letting the salt of your sweat run down your face in the shower
the first bite of a strawberry
the second bite
the third
listening to someone's laughter from down the hall, closing your eyes, feeling as if you're taking part in a baptism.
Your hair that curls or flattens from the heat.
Waking up to your own warm body in the morning.
Someone saying they love you for the first time.

Ok no I lied. Can anyone get me my mother's first cheerleading uniform when she was captain?
Or my sister's first guitar when she was fourteen?
Or my brother's first bike(s) that he crashed and replaced frequently?
Or my father's worn Bruce Springsteen albums?
Or the way the sky looks at you, adoringly, for no good reason at all?
If no, then I don't need a darn thing.

So for Christmas let's all just make a fort made out of blankets, and read books.
I would love that.

HerStory Head Editor,
Maria