#this rant brought to you by: sheer exhaustion and overwhemling frustration

[thegeminisage]

rebl*g this and die, freaks. anti-holiday tw for uhh anyone who needs that lol

i hate i hate i HATE CHR*STMAS i hate the INSTITUTION OF GIFT GIVING it’s all about CONSUMERISM and PEER PRESSURE

i hate the EXCHANGE OF OBJECTS i hate the HOARDING OF STUFF

i got 10 gifts tonight. of those 10 gifts, i can use and/or like 4 of them. (wet cat food which was actually a gift for gracie lol, a gift card, new sheets bc mine are the wrong size, and a new office chair). those things are really nice gifts and i’m grateful! especially the office chair because mine BROKE recently and they’re expensive and hard to find (my mom and her buddy went halvsies on it)

however this leaves me 6 things i do not want and cannot use...some of them are from my mom, who really DID NOT NEED to get me SO MANY gifts because i only got her 2. (i hate the imbalance of reciprocity because i will never have enough money to get gifts for all the people that give ME gifts.) 1 of them is from my mom’s buddy. so that’s all stuff i can’t even resell at the flea market because they’d see them and get their feelings hurt and the house is already so full of stuff we don’t need or use that we can’t even have company over and every year my mom cries about how ashamed of it she is and EVERY YEAR WE ACCUMULATE MORE STUFF and i have to be polite! i have to pretend i want the stuff!

and the gifts i got that i don’t want and can’t use came from people i only see twice ever, on thanksgiving and christmas, and i barely know them, and they barely know me, and actually i don’t even LIKE some of them (and they don’t like me - got into it on FB once before i stopped visiting that site permanently). 

and then we have to give the stuff! to everyone! we don’t have any money but every year at christmas we have to put together gifts for LITERALLY dozens of people - flea market people, family people, nursing home buddy people, friend circle a, friend circle b, etc etc etc

we spend all this time putting together stuff that’s either cheaply-bought & easily mass-produced (like mugs with hot chocolate) that I KNOW NOBODY ACTUALLY WANTS or stuff that we can’t really afford - my brother and i frequently get up to $100+ bucks worth of christmas gifts - again, most of which i don’t want and can’t use and which my mother CANNOT AFFORD TO GIVE US - because “it’s christmas” and we have to have a mountain of presents. THAT IS JUST CONSUMERISM

and my mother can never EVER put together that many gifts on time. NEVER. i am ALWAYS the one helping her do it. in the MIDDLE of winter when i don’t want to do anything but die, basically! for my least favorite holiday! and then when i’m not jumping for joy and excitedly doing the wrapping like santa’s good little fucking helper i get yelled at for having a bad attitude and ruining the holidays!!

and GOD FORBID. that everything isn’t picture-perfect! a speck of dirt on a mug? a crack? okay let’s toss it and get a new one. let’s scrub it. a price sticker? that’s gotta come off, residue and all. no we can’t just partially peel it. no we can’t just color over it with a sharpie

and it’s not just the gifts! i got glared at MULTIPLE times today just for opening my fucking mouth. someone says about my aunt’s dog: “aw, she’s a good dog.” me, jokingly: “good and spoiled!” and then i get the death glare. literally no one, NO ONE, was offended except my mother, not even my aunt herself, who is notoriously easily offended. i shit talk my own cats all the time! it wasn’t that big of a deal! i didn’t call anybody racist or anything! tried to tell my aunt how i found the old pictures of her dog as a puppy i got her as her gift and got SHUSHED because my mom thought i was going to inadvertently give away someone else’s gift, as if i don’t have any fucking common sense. she’s just that paranoid! that one little thing! will be ruined!

and then there’s the actual dinner which is a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS to cook, and do the men help? never. they do good to carry the food to the table when it’s finished. they don’t help cook, they don’t help clean, they don’t even pay for the fucking groceries. they sit and watch tv!!! they talk shit about minorities and homeless people!!!!! and if i say anything then I AM THE ONE RUINING CHRISTMAS

and nobody in my family is even EXCITED OR GRATEFUL we’re all just a bunch of ASSHOLES?? so last night we spent an hour gift wrapping ten different blankets and labeling them with what color they were and today everyone picked a blanket and nobody was really excited about it. blankets are boring gifts you give to people who you don’t know well! so that whole hour was spent for 5 minutes of mediocre graditude! like what is even the point! yk at least when i get useless stuff i don’t need i give it my best college try at being 

and when my mom asks me! why do you hate christmas! and i try to explain that i hate the institution of gift-giving! when i’m like, i don’t like it, it’s exhausting and expensive! she’s like well the whole point of christmas is the spirit of giving!! and [GAMESHOW BUZZER SOUND] W R O N G ! the point of christmas is CAPITALISM and PEER PRESSURE and PERFECTIONISM this shit ain’t about jesus even i, an atheist, knows that jesus would weep to see how shallow and false his bday bash is every year

and i have stayed up late MULTIPLE nights in a row wrangling GIFTS, some of which are for people i’ve never even MET, all because my mother likes to bite off more than she can chew EVERY YEAR. she has like a basket of lollipops she wants to give out at the local nursing home and she went through THREE BASKETS so that the arrangement of lollipops would be pretty. she re-wrapped my SIL’s gift because it was ugly. it doesn’t matter if she’s tired and her arthritis is killing her and she’s past her bedtime she will not stop until all the gifts look like they came from martha stewart or some shit! and they are just! going to get ripped up!

and we didn’t even have time to play giant jenga today which is the ONLY acceptable chr*stmas activity and we probably won’t have time to play tomorrow either!!!!!!!!!! stupid! the whole thing is stupid! i hate mass gift-giving! birthdays only! BIRTHDAYS ONLY. only specific people should be getting gifts at a time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CHR*STMAS IS STUPID IT IS LITERALLY THE WORST HOLIDAY AND IT LASTS FOR TWO MONTHS E V E R Y Y E A R BECAUSE GOD HATES ME PERSONALLY I GUESS chr*stmas being the longest holiday and also set in the winter is my punishment from god for being an atheist and frankly @ god fuck you too pal