I'm Mrs. Black Christmas. I'm Mrs. Grrrrrr.

I'm going to start a crusade against Christmas. Not against religion or holidays or any kind of spiritual celebration. You keep your religion and your feast days. But I don't get this kind of hassle during Passover or Ramadan.

Why do people yell at me on the phone because the stapler they ordered won't be there in time for Christmas morning? Will it honestly ruin Christmas if it gets delivered on December 26th?? And why aren't my brothers speaking to one another? Why isn't my little brother speaking to me? (Although, having not spoken to him in some time there's a good chance that he did not recognize my email address when it came through, but I seem to remember getting along with the brother and wife quite well the last time we met up.) Why is Christmas a monster instead of just a day off?

This is one day out of the year. One day. It's not the most important day -- and, if you're Daoist, there is no most important day ... except maybe Halloween -- and stuff that you can get on this day, you can usually get any other day. You can be nice to people any day you want and see family any day you want. Why the f**k is it so important that we all drop everything to get on planes, spend money we don't have and generally freak out if things don't go as planned on Christmas? Since I'm not yet the Papal See I don't have definite information on this, but I'm willing to bet that even the Christian God is irritated by the hypocrisy that gets thrown around in His name.

I declare the following truths to be self-evident: if you need to buy jewelry to make for a special Christmas, you have other issues you're not dealing with; if you can call you friends, brothers/sisters, mother on Christmas, you can call them on January 8, May 3, September 20, etc...; cards are nice to get any time of the year; and if things aren't going to work out as planned on December 25th, reschedule them for December 29th or January 8 or May 3 or September 20, etc...

And, before you get in my dish, yes, I realize that I've been suckered into the panic. I sent out cards, we put up a string of lights in the window, I made presents for my family and shipped them out to be delivered in time for Christmas. It's because I keep falling for the holiday freak fest that I'm taking this stance. It's turning my hair white and making me fear for humanity when I hear about families not speaking and people losing control over rubberbands.

If this plan fails and next year is bad again, I'm moving to Vanuatu and letting the ocean swallow me up.