1. Religious confusion. My religious background is super-duper complicated. To fully explain it would take up an entire blog entry, so I'll just say this; Unitarian, Orthodox Jewish, Roman Catholic, Christian Scientist, Islam and Buddhist are just a few of the many religions my immediate/extended family practices/has practiced. I realize that Christmas has become largely separate from religion, but it's really hard for me to ignore the hypocrisy of celebrating a Christian holiday when I really don't have any relationship with Christianity whatsoever.
2. I'm a vegetarian. When you spend up to two weeks watching people prepare various corpses of dead animals in special sauces you kind of start to dread big holiday dinners. The reason I became a vegetarian is because I don't want to be around animal flesh. My family considers themselves "tolerant" of my vegetarianisim, which means they spend roughly all their time making stupid jokes about it. Like, a million stupid jokes at my expense. The same ones. Over and over again. For three years straight. It. Gets. Old.
3. Time at home. Christmas vacation at UNH is 5 weeks long. I grew up in the boonies of Southern Maine. My hometown gets boring after, like, 3 days. Not to mention, I've sort of carved a fairly pleasant existence for myself at college. I have my own apartment, great friends, favorite bars and cafes and restaurants. I have great classes plus I go to editors meeiting on Mondays, film screenings on Tuesdays, I write fiction on Wednesdays, go to Bluegrass nights on Thursdays and usually have my weekends fully booked up with friends. I've got a simple day-to-day routine that I'm quite fond of. I'm not saying it's glamorous and sometimes it's incredibly overwhelming, but it's mine. When I go back to my hometown for 5 weeks it makes me feel dull and listless, puttering around and letting my Mom (who is awesome) take care of me. It's sort of a throwback to my life in high school, which, honestly was not that great.
4. Presents. I don't have a ton of money, but people around me do. When old friends and family members give me incredibly expensive gifts and all I can do is give them homemade paper roses on a dried branch in a glass bottle it makes me feel kind of inferior. Just a constant reminder that I will never be able to afford the things that these people seem to think I deserve. And I feel bad because they obviously put a lot of thought into their gifts for me, which are always lovely, and I feel like I give them the college-student equivalent of grade school crayon drawings. "Thanks for the brand new hardcover copy of my favorite book! You're SO thoughtful! I got you a mug! Actually, I made it! You can't put it in the dishwasher. Also it has a huge crack in the middle of it. Maybe you can put rocks in it, or something!" Yeah, I suck.
5. Unemployment. No business in Maine wants to hire a college kid for 5 weeks. Believe me, I've tried. At school I hardly ever touch my savings because I never have time to spend them. But when I'm home I have nothing BUT free time and I have nothing to do BUT spend money. So I'm not making any money and I'm spending a ton of it. My already pathetic bank account is depleting before my very eyes and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Except, you know, not spend money.
But hey, I like other holidays. Hell, I LOVE other holidays. I'm partial to 4th of July and New Years and other one-day holidays that are fun simply because they are mindless and short-term. I also really like fireworks. I just don't see why Christmas is such a big deal, especially now that we start getting ready for it BEFORE Thanksgiving (also not one of my favorite Holidays). But I love my family, and cookies, and snow. So I'm going to make it through this holiday. I will. And I'll keep reminding myself that it only comes once a year, and that's just fine with me.
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