Expats

'Keep your festivities. They're just too much hard work for me'

By Craig McIntosh (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-25 08:07

Bah humbug, I say! Who needs Christmas? It's just too much hard work.

First comes the scramble for gifts and the struggle to think of something else to buy over-indulged family and friends.

Then there is actually buying the gifts, rubbish like "special edition" CDs and DVDs, soap hampers and endless tins of shortbread. Not forgetting the annual Christmas Eve pit stop at the gas station to buy whatever they have on offer for that person you forgot to buy for.

What makes it worse is that just a week or two later, all this stuff you waste your monthly wage on is usually half price in the Boxing Day sales.

However, leaving an I.O.U. in a Christmas stocking with a promise of a gift to be purchased at a reduced rate does not go down well. It does not say "thriftiness is golden" to your loved one. No, it leads to embarrassed silences over the dinner table and yearlong recriminations. Trust me, I speak from experience.

And all this hassle and we haven't even got to the Dec 25 funfest yet!

Oh, what a treat. Being woken up at the crack of dawn to watch people open presents, trying desperately to put off reaching for that package they just know is an ill-fitting sweater knitted by that strange aunt who lives with a lot of cats.

And that's just the children; how much fun it must be for adults to clean up that small mountain of wrapping paper that appears 30 seconds after the first piece of sticky tape has been snapped.

Right now, millions of people are probably eating themselves into a stupor and drinking in bad television all in the name of "seasonal spirit".

Thank heavens it only happens once a year.

Craig McIntosh is a copy editor at China Daily and a budding Ebenezer Scrooge