This Time of Year, Enough is Enough.

This is me. (Courtesy of TVSquad.com)

This post is going to make me sound like a total Grinch. But it's barely December, and I'm already sick of Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love the holiday. I love spending time with my family and tearing into all the presents.

No, what I hate is that Christmas is freaking EVERYWHERE. There is no escaping it anymore. In fact, there was very little chance of escaping it even before Thanksgiving. It doesn't help at all that I work retail part-time. We had a few Christmas songs thrown here and there into our already-irritating overhead music selection. But that music selection got even more irritating when it switched to nothing but Christmas music. The week of Thanksgiving.

All Christmas music wouldn't be so bad. If it weren't the same six songs over and over again with a few different ones randomly thrown in. I swear, I could be at work for roughly six hours and hear twelve different versions of "Little Drummer Boy" or "Santa Baby" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Not to mention I just get really ticked off whenever I look at these stupid pyramid-shaped thingamajigs that basically look like trees made of red plastic ball ornaments and that seemed to be sprinkled randomly throughout the entire store. It's not really the way they look, although that irritates me, but it's the fact that they were put out on the sales floor along with the rest of the Christmas decorations at the end of October.

I've decided that we've started celebrating Christmas way too early in the year (is it too much to ask that we wait until after Thanksgiving is over?) and that there's also too much Christmas overkill. But maybe that's just the frustrated thoughts of an equally frustrated retail worker.

(Oh, and just a hint, please be nice to us. This is one of our busiest seasons, so we're doing our best, but we can't do everything. And your being rude to or impatient towards us isn't going to do you any favors at all. We have the tendency to act passively aggressive towards you in subtle ways you won't notice.)

Okay, now that I've done my little rant, I can take a deep breath and calm down a little bit. To make up for my tirade that made me seem like the new Grinch, I thought I'd share with you some of the things I DO like about Christmas. At least in the days/weeks leading up to the holiday, my favorite parts are watching my favorite Christmas movies. And I guess I'll be like Santa and make my list.

First up on the list is one that does double duty for two holidays. I usually save Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the month-and-a-half span between Halloween and Christmas. And even if I don't get around to watch it, you can bet I will be belting out the soundtrack in my car several times throughout the holiday season.

Courtesy of IMPAwards.com

Second up is one of my all-time favorites. I can remember watching Christmas Vacation when I was about five or six years old and laughing at all the parts I didn't understand but still thought hilarious. It's even funnier now that I actually get it. Plus, it helps that I finally realized that Rusty is actually played by the same guy who plays Leonard on The Big Bang Theory (small world and mind now blown, huh?) And who can't help but laugh at Clark's awesome, "mature audiences only" tirade?




Third on the list is another of my childhood favorites: A Christmas Story. This was an ode to all the kids who were sure they'd never get the thing they wanted most for Christmas. It's also one of those Christmas movies that used to have a full 24 hours dedicated to; now, though, I have to settle with watching it with my DVD player set on repeat. And there are so many great scenes from the movie: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid," all of the main character Ralphie's long-winded descriptions of the Red Ryder BB Gun, "the F-dash-dash-dash" scene, the tongue-stuck-to-the-flagpole scene, the "I can't put my arms down" scene, or the infamous leg lamp. (By the way,you can buy the leg lamp here.) But this is one of my favorites:




Another of my favorites is the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Don't get that confused with Jim Carrey's The Grinch. The two cannot even be compared. Jim Carrey's version wasn't narrated by Boris Karloff and didn't have the song "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch." It didn't stand a chance in my book.

Courtesy of Aveleyman.com

A new favorite of mine is ELF. This one was surprising because I typically don't like Will Ferrell all that much (so sue me), but it still had its hilarious moments like "You smell like beef and cheese, you don't smell like Santa!" And for true Christmas Story fans, grown-up Ralphie has a brief cameo, which makes the movie even better. A new Christmas classic and the star from another classic? Yes, please.

Well, my list is complete, and if you don't mind, I think I'll go check it twice and watch some of those movies. Especially A Christmas Story. But just remember: "You'll shoot your eye out." :)