Christmas a humbug? You're not the only Scrooge

Everyone looks forward to Christmas.

But Christmas curmudgeons look forward to it in their own, very special way.

They look forward to it like they look forward to root canal. They look forward to it like they look forward to changing a stinky diaper. They look forward to it like they look forward to a 7-hour flight delay, toe fungus, or a major medical bill.

And some of them may have a point.

The crowds! The lines! The presents that have to be bought, the food that has to be made, the cards that have to go out! The tree that has to be decorated — and then un-decorated! The never-ending Christmas songs, piping out of loudspeakers!

Worst of all, the enforced Christmas cheer — no matter how irritating it all gets. And the guilt and resentment that comes from not being "in the holiday spirit."

''It is really an atrocious institution," playwright Bernard Shaw wrote in 1893.

"We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be drunken because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don't like."

You're not alone

Shaw, of course, was an "intellectual." They're supposed to be cranks.

But lots of less exalted thinkers have said the same thing. Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, and Larry David are all Christmas haters. An "I Hate Christmas" Facebook page has 14K followers.

Santaphobics do their own kind of Christmas shopping. "Tis the Damn Season" greeting cards. Books like "I Hate Christmas: A Manifesto for the Modern-Day Scrooge" by Daniel Blythe. T-shirts that read "Wake Me Up When Christmas is Over," and "Deck the Halls Yourself."

"I detest all holidays, but none as much as Christmas," Larry David has said. "There’s the loathsome music. The movies with their ridiculous, treacly sentiments. The presents — thinking about them, shopping for them (never without resentment), and the attendant pile of garbage that accumulates from opening them, an environmental disaster simultaneously taking place in living rooms across the country.”

Scrooges, you say? Grinches, whose hearts are two sizes too small? By no means! Those were amateurs. Worse, backsliders.

After all, they recanted. They drank the Christmas Kool-Aid. They wound up with hearts full of joy, and arms full of presents for the Cratchits, The Whos, and all the other freeloaders.

Nor can we count the Waitresses. Their 1981 hit "Christmas Wrapping" was not so much anti-Christmas as just Christmas-weary. "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, But I think I'll miss this one this year," they sang.

The true Christmas cynic is as confirmed in his faith as Joan of Arc.

"Kill the turkeys ducks and chickens, Mix the punch — drag out the Dickens, Even though the prospect sickens, Brother here we go again," sang satirist Tom Lehrer back in 1959. He was one.

Christmas is cancelled!

But the original anti-Christmas folk were none other than our beloved Pilgrim fathers.

They thought Christmas disgraceful. An excuse to not work. Also a perversion of what should be a sacred day — the birthday of Our Lord — for purposes of drinking, mirth and revelry. In 1621, just a year after the Mayflower landed, Plymouth colony governor William Bradford banned Christmas. He actually went around collecting people's toys. "There should be no gaming or revelling in the streets," he sourly decreed.

Nowadays, those who oppose Christmas on principle often oppose it on a different one. The commercialism.

Christmas, they contend, is a racket. A way to move merchandise. Our duty to the economy, some would argue. "It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know," says Lucy in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And who's to say she's wrong?

Add to this, the wastefulness. Especially now — when the environment is a paramount concern, and our money is urgently needed in all sorts of places. Buying a useless gewgaw for Uncle Eugene, who "really doesn't want anything," seems like a travesty.

"The American idea of Christmas here in 2023 is a war against decency," said Rev. Billy Talen, whose puckish organization, The Church of Stop Shopping, inveighs against consumerism in all its forms.

"Concerned parents should find another way to give presents, a different context for gathering in love with their children," he said.

A voice, crying in the wilderness. And likely, to no avail — until the last shopper maxes his last credit card.

But wait. What if there's more to Christmas than just items in a gift catalog?

What if, underneath all the hype, Christmas is still about joy, generosity, kindness, tolerance, peace on earth and good will toward men?

What if we were to cultivate the true Christmas spirit? The spirit of the carolers of old, as they wassailed through the neighborhood, or old Fezziwig as he danced a jig at his own Christmas party?

Just kidding. Grit your teeth, haters. It will all be over on the 26th.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Christmas haters? Here's who says the loudest bah humbug