The Art of Choosing Christmas Gifts

Christmas is right around the corner.

I love Christmas for 2 reasons:

1) I get to see my family

2) I get to decorate my house

You'll notice that I didn't mention getting gifts.

Don't get me wrong, I love receiving free crap.

It's awesome.

But I'm not convinced that it's necessary. 

We as a society have decided to put the whole "Christmas is actually based on all sorts of religious shit" in a closet and pretend it's not weird.

Now I'm not a very religious person, so don't mistake this post as a "God-is-good" rant. 

All I'm saying is, Christmas has turned the corner from "a cool-dude was born [who was kind of a big deal]" and opened the door to "people spend ass-loads of money for no reason and trample fellow humans on black Friday". 

It's the whole reason Halloween is now my favorite holiday.

Nice job, society.
I hope you're proud of yourselves.

I don't like feeling stressed. I don't deal with stress well. 

And that's all Christmas has turned into for me. 

Mainly when it comes to gift buying.

Set aside the fact that I haven't the slightest idea why we find it necessary to buy people crap and call it a Holiday. 

Put that in the closet with the religious rant.

You'll probably meet the red-headed step child in there, too.

So say hello and try not to stare.

Gift buying is a pain in my ass, plain & simple.

It depends on the person, of course.

There are three types of gift-receivers in my gifts-to-buy-people group:

1. The people who make a list of what they want and expect you to buy from it. I love these people. Because there's no secret, "I hope she listened when I said I really liked that butt-ugly sweater ten years ago and got me that instead." I assure you that I did not listen, nor would I have remembered if I did.
2. The people who have everything. What the hell am I supposed to get them? A freaking pony? These people tend to open your gift, say a lame "cool," then set it aside like they just opened a package containing anthrax. They later return the gift.
3. And then there are the people who tell you "oh, don't get me anything!" But you have to get them something, and luckily when they open the gift [which is probably a plate of cheese or sausage], act like you just gave them a pot of gold . [Rainbow sold separately]

Here's my process on buying gifts:

That pretty much sums it up.

Now, feel free to substitute your own favorite college team under "KU items".

Unless it's Missouri.

I won't tolerate that shiz on this blog.

I started my shopping online on Cyber Sunday [because the deals pretty much last all weekend].

I'm done with people in group 1, started on group 3, and am ignoring group 2.

Because they irritate me.

And because I have no idea what crappy gift I'm going to get for them this year.

I'm considering just buying them something extra shitty. That way I'll know they will hate it in advance.

Planned shitty gift = zero disappointment.