The NC Double Scrooge: Family/Social Division
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on December 14, 2010 – 9:28 AM64 Comments
“I think it says ‘fragile,’ honey.”
It’s the interpersonal aspects of the holidays that cause the most stress — not because we hate everyone, either, although rage does occasionally play a role. It’s more about performance anxiety. Did we get the right presents? Can we get home in time to trim the tree with Mom? Have we overthought the Secret Santa at work? Does coffee-cart lady get a tip?
Welcome to the family/social wing of the NC Double Scrooge house, where abrasive in-laws and impenetrable assembly instructions meet for a drink and settle their differences (and also where we hucked in all the poll choices we forgot in previous rounds).
NC Double Scrooge, Family/Social Division: Please Pick The Three (3) WORST
- Family-visit politicking (12%, 415 Votes)
- The Christmas letter that is a poorly punctuated brag-a-thon (11%, 369 Votes)
- Trying to make everything perfect, which just results in making everything and everyone miserable (7%, 243 Votes)
- Not knowing how/if to tip the people who deal with your split ends, toe jam, pubic hair, mail, garbage, etc. (5%, 179 Votes)
- Uneven gift exchanges (5%, 174 Votes)
- No, it actually is not "cool" for you to "put us" on the uninsulated mud porch -- we're childless, not animals (5%, 163 Votes)
- STRESS EMOTIONS CRYING DRINKING VOMITING (4%, 157 Votes)
- Overschedulement (4%, 156 Votes)
- Dealing with the guilt that you haven't sent Christmas cards in years, not even the obligatory "Look at our CUTE baby in his first Christmas outfit!" mailer (4%, 152 Votes)
- The office holiday party (4%, 140 Votes)
- Realizing that you have nothing to say to 65 percent of the people on your holiday-card list (4%, 130 Votes)
- Yes, Christmas has pagan/Roman origins; nobody likes a know-it-all, Mr. Solsticepants (4%, 128 Votes)
- Living or working near a major holiday center -- i.e., Macy's in NYC; a mall; the theater in your town that hosts the Nutcracker (3%, 118 Votes)
- Pets vs. tree: eating tree, climbing tree, knocking tree over, playing with ornaments, drinking out of tree stand, getting sap on selves, forcing you to put tree on top of fridge (3%, 115 Votes)
- Hey, excited small child or elderly relative who doesn't need that much sleep anymore: we salute your enthusiasm, but IT IS FOUR-EIGHTEEN IN THE MORNING (3%, 113 Votes)
- People who make their pets wear Santa hats or antlers (3%, 89 Votes)
- Trying to find holiday cards that aren't too Christian, too cutesy, or too artsy (i.e., the cardinal in the snow that could be for any winter event) (2%, 78 Votes)
- Self-righteous debates over how, when, and in what order to open gifts (2%, 74 Votes)
- Passive-aggressive commentary on how messy/wasteful gift wrapping is "nowadays," like everything was wrapped in linen or beef 40 years ago or something (2%, 71 Votes)
- Office Secret Santa pools that require a rulebook 20 pages in length (2%, 57 Votes)
- Fruit in the stocking -- if I want an orange, I'll buy it myself (2%, 55 Votes)
- That "I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!1!1" friend whose intense adoration of all things Yule starts out sweetly enviable but by December 2 has become rather unnerving (we don't mean you, Wing Chun!) (OR DO WE?) (1%, 52 Votes)
- Chasing down addresses for Christmas cards (1%, 48 Votes)
- Making fun of Kwanzaa -- it's hacky and you don't even know what Kwanzaa is (1%, 33 Votes)
- Staying up until sunrise to put together the most complicated toy ever, only to watch the kid play more with the box it came in than with the toy itself (1%, 31 Votes)
- Pets who refuse to wear Santa hats or antlers (1%, 31 Votes)
- Finding out from your sister that Santa Claus isn't real and, for the record, neither is the Easter Bunny, and by the way, you are probably adopted (1%, 27 Votes)
- SantaCon (1%, 20 Votes)
- Holiday-card writer's cramp (0%, 16 Votes)
- "Noooo, YOU said YOU were getting the AA batteries!" (0%, 16 Votes)
- Realizing far too late that 1) you do not have cookies or a carrot to leave out for Santa and his team and 2) your child is At That Age where rolling with it is off the menu (0%, 15 Votes)
- Mistletoe -- stop shoving people under it, and if you get shoved, just smooch and get it over with (0%, 15 Votes)
- The Christmas-Eve vet trip occasioned by the nibbling of tinsel, broken ornaments, ribbon, gelt, and/or poinsettia (0%, 14 Votes)
- The Yule log -- it really only works if you shove your TV in the fireplace (0%, 10 Votes)
- Fireplace fail, especially the kind that somehow manages to set the garage on fire (0%, 2 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,193
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Tags: Keckler NC Double Scrooge TAKING IT PERSONALLY winter-holiday agita
Does anybody else have to deal with this type of crap?: You didn’t manage to see certain people over Christmas, but there are still gifts to exchange, so you meet up at a restaurant for lunch and then exchange gifts IN THE PARKING LOT (complete with unwrapping and ooh-ing and aah-ing) because one friggin’ person is “sensitive” and “feels uncomfortable” with the people in restaurant watching her unwrap her gifts.
15 years of marriage into this family, and we still have to play this damn game EVERY Christmas and birthday.
Nobody but me has this one? Very well, I’ll just give it all three of my own votes and be quiet.
Maybe this is regional, but the holiday commercials for Jared (a jewelry store) are far and away my most-despised part of the Christmas season. I don’t even watch much un-DVR’d TV, but somehow those brilliant Jared people have figured out a way to get their insipid commercials in my ears. HATE.
@ Jen S 1.0 – the moist nutmeats! Brilliant! Best laugh of the day so far.
Eh, I use Ms. Solsticepants as an excuse to be all, “Yeah, I’m not Christian, but Yule and Christmas are pretty much the same holiday these days so whatevs, give me presents.”
I hate holiday cards and refuse to send any. I don’t CARE.
Oh, my relatives write their holiday letters FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THEIR PETS. ‘Nuff said there.
Family politics = HATE.
Re: Mud Room – when I became old enough to have a credit card of my own, I told my notoriously frugal family (who are masters of shoehorning people on floors, couches and sofa beds) that if I couldn’t have a real bed in a room with a door that closes, I would gladly stay in a hotel. And can you believe it, this policy STILL cheeses some family members off! I’ve got kids of my own now, which makes it easier, but if I happen to be traveling by myself, it’s still drama.
Anecdote unrelated to Christmas, but along the same lines: my father and I traveled separately to a wedding. I had booked a room with one queen bed, thinking my husband could come with, but he unexpectedly had to stay home. My dad, apparently the world’s oldest and greatest moocher, had made no reservation because his sisters told him “someone would have room for him.” We get there at the same time, he finds that no one has room for him, and there are no rooms available with double beds for me to switch to. I end up ON A COT IN MY OWN ROOM. At age 28. About 4:30 a.m., as I’ve tossed and turned being kept awake with my dad’s snores, it dawns on me: I’m a grown-up! I have credit! I marched downstairs in my pajamas, booked myself another room, and left my dad a note so he wouldn’t worry. He of course added insult to injury and called me far too early and woke me up. Additional insult: he never even offered to reimburse me for either room.
The one good thing about SantaCons? This costume:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/desaturated_santa_costume.html
I don’t understand the whole tipping your stylist / manicurist / Brazilian waxer for Christmas. I mean, if you already tip them at every visit, why would you have to give them a “bonus” tip? I’ve just always found it confusing.
What about people who absolutely WILL NOT even HINT at what they would like for Christmas?!
“What do would you like?”
Mom: “Nothing. I have everything.”
Dad: “Nothing. Socks.” He says socks EVERY year.
Unless you are Oprah or Bill Gates, you don’t have everything! I’m going to get you a gift because you are a blood relative! Please throw me a bone! Or an Amazon wishlist!
There are few things that piss on my holiday cheer more than those gifty-grabby “exchange” things. Only time I tolerated it was at an office I used to work for… it was a small team and the company paid for a nice batch of gifts, which were then distributed via the gifty-grabby game. We were all friends, so there was merriment rather than aggro, and everyone ended up with a great present no matter what. (One year I scored the wine basket and begged for it to be stolen, as I don’t drink. It soon found a loving home.)
Any other time though: Haaaaaaate.
Kristen B, thanks for that link! That costume is truly amazing. It’s brilliant for SantaCon because your eye expects to see red — I was trying to imagine it for a Halloween costume — it would work to some degree but not with the absolute brilliance it does here. Wow.
@Adam807,
Thank you for the links to Wondermark. It’s too late for this year, but I’m definitely ordering some cards from them for next year. Too funny!
Okay, now I’m feeling kind of bad about the photo postcards. I’m nursing 8 hours a day, so yeah, signing my name four thousand times isn’t really the best use of my 13.5 minutes of daily free time. I think my husband would rather I take a shower….
I’d like to see an option for the Christmas list. Every year, despite my insistence that I don’t need much (genuine, mind you, not the martyred, “Oh, don’t even dream of thinking about me for thirty seconds” routine), I am forced to create a Christmas list for one side of our family. The list isn’t problematic, in and of itself, but there are budget restraints (understandably), so when I fill the list up with books, dvds and cds, then I hear about how they want to get something “more personal.” I’m not rich, but if it costs thirty bucks and I really wanted it, I’d have it by now, so I have to spend hours coming up with affordable things that I didn’t know I wanted. And the end result? On Christmas, there’s not a single surprise and I get bubble bath when I’d really rather have had a gift certificate for Kindle titles. Voicing any of this, even tactfully, makes me feel ungrateful and Scrooge-like and is met with passive-aggressive grumping, so I resign myself to standing in return lines….
STRESS EMOTIONS CRYING DRINKING VOMITING
I am 100% shocked this is not number one. Who are you people with your idyllic, non-stressful families??
My office Christmas party is tomorrow – a lunch affair which I may legitimately be too busy to attend. Quel dommage.
@SarahBeth—Hoping you made it off the cape before the snow started.