For those that can’t stand this time of the year, my misery seeks company. What does it for you?
For me: aside from the usual family stuff:
I worked front-end in a post office back when that meant a line-up before I opened the doors to the end of the day when I had to inform the line-up that was still out the door that, yes, I was going to close on time. (Some didn’t take that well. For me it was just another Tuesday…)
It meant a lot of work with little thanks and I had to listen to the same shitty Xmas playlist over and over all day.
Edit/PS: The quick downvote sells it. Perfection. chefs kiss
My wife’s brother married into a very super Catholic latin-american family. These are the people that have 2-3 separate birthday parties for the same person and everyone in the extended party is expected and required to attend all of them. Like a nephew has a birthday on a Tuesday, so there’s a dinner and party on that exact date for that. Then another on a Saturday (all day and into late night) for dozens more people to attend, then the friends from school party at a bounce house or some shit on a Sunday.
Christmas is awful because Christmas Eve is an all day thing until the morning early hours, then Christmas Day all day until late night, and of course it’s someone’s birthday a couple days after. So there’s the expectation of all attending all the events throughout the week.
They expect everyone to assimilate into their traditions, their religion, their schedules with nothing but relentless guilt tripping if you have other plans.
My wife is too nice to do anything, I’ve essentially removed the filter when explaining we’ll do a little bit on one or maybe both for Xmas eve and Xmas for a couple hours. And just ONE of the birthday parties for the same person.
It’s just relentless and never ending. Even being there is joyless as you’re constantly required to stand there for 10 minutes at a time to take photos. Standing somewhere when you want to sit, or vice versa. Then after many hours and you want to leave or takes an hour to get the fuck out of there with all the goodbyes and corralling the kids and getting guilt tripped for leaving.
God damn I hate this time of year.