Posted on 12/04/2004 2:10:20 PM PST by Pokey78
If I hear "Frosty the Snowman" one more time, I'll rip his frozen face off.
It's a scientific fact, or should be, that Christmas music can turn you into a fruitcake. It either sends you into a Pavlovian shopping trance, buying stupid things like the Robosapien, or, if you hear repeated Clockwork-Orange choruses of "Ring, Christmas Bells" drilling into your brain with that slasher-movie staccato, makes you feel as possessed with Christmas spirit as Norman Bates.
I've never said this out loud before, but I can't stand Christmas.
Everyone in my family loves it except me, and they can't fathom why I get the mullygrubs, as a Southern friend of mine used to call a low-level depression, from Thanksgiving straight through New Year.
"You're weird," my mom says. This from a woman who once left up our Christmas tree until April 3, and who listens to a radio station that plays carols 24/7 all month.
My equally demonic sister has a whole collection of rodents dressed in holiday clothes that she puts up around her house. There's a mouse Santa Claus and mouse Mrs. Claus and mice elves and a miniature Christmas village with mice, and some rat Cinderella coachmen in pink waistcoats and rats in red velvet vests and more rats, wearing frilly red-and-white nightshirts and nightcaps and holding little candles, leading you up the steps to bed. It's beyond creepy. I keep fretting that it's going to be like "Willard" meets "The Nutcracker," where they come alive and eat her like a Christmas pudding.
My mom and sister both blissfully sat through "It's a Wonderful Life" again on Thanksgiving weekend, while even hearing a mere snatch of that movie makes me want to scarf down a fistful of antidepressants - and join all the other women in America who are on a holiday high - except our family doctor is a Scrooge about designer drugs, leaving me to self-medicate as Clarence gets his wings with extra brandy in the eggnog.
I've given a lot of thought to why others' season of joy is my season of doom - besides the obvious fact that yuppies have drenched the holidays in ever more absurd levels of consumerism.
I think it has to do with how stressed out my mom and sister would get on Christmas Day when I was little. I remember them snapping at me; they seemed tense because of all the aprons to be sashed and potatoes to be mashed. (In our traditional Irish household, women slaved and men were waited on.)
It might be exacerbated by the stress I feel when I think of all the money I've spent on lavishing boyfriends with presents over the years, guys who are now living with other women who are enjoying my lovingly picked out presents which I'm no doubt still paying for in credit card interest charges.
I was embracing my Christmas black dog the other day when I read a Times article so scary it made my hair - and my genes - curl.
It was about how severe stress can make a woman age very rapidly and prematurely, looking years older than her chronological age, because the stress causes the DNA in our cells to shrink, and sort of curl down on itself, until the cells can no longer replicate. "When people are under stress they look haggard, it's like they age before your eyes, and here's something going on at a molecular level" that reflects that impression, said one of the researchers, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco.
So now, on top of all the stress related to having a president and vice president who scared us to death about terrorists to get re-elected, I have to be stressed about the fact that my holiday stress might cause me to turn into an old bat - instantly, just like it happened in Grimm's fairy tales, when a girl would be cursed and suddenly become a crone. Or just like this Christmas doll my sister brought home once that had an apple for a head; her face looked all juicy and white at the start of the week and then by the end of the week, it was all discolored and puckered.
I flipped through the hot new self-help book by Gordon Livingston, a psychiatrist from Columbia, Md., "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now."
One of them is the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse; confrontation gradually improves it.
Yep. I definitely need to rip Frosty's face off.
Why am I not surprised?
Since this thread will no doubt get a lot of replies..for a much lighter side of Christmas , does anyone have a copy of the classic Russell Baker column on the Fruitcake? As I write this, I can't believe that the Times, who used to have Baker, now has Dowd and Krugman..
MoDo gives ME the mullygrubs all the time.
Perhaps she needs to reflect on the Nativity Creche?
I think this article was done tongue-in-cheek and she isn't serious.
Yep, Mo the crone just couldn't resist that dig.
Michael, you are so way better off now.
It is rather perverse to my mind, that the NYT would continue to exhibit this obviously emotionally disturbed woman. What are they waiting for her to do, put a bullet through her head. This women needs help, not exhibition.
I suppose for Liberals, misery loves company.
Happy Holidays Maureen.
My equally demonic sister has a whole collection of rodents dressed in holiday clothes that she puts up around her house. There's a mouse Santa Claus and mouse Mrs. Claus and mice elves and a miniature Christmas village with mice, and some rat Cinderella coachmen in pink waistcoats and rats in red velvet vests and more rats, wearing frilly red-and-white nightshirts and nightcaps and holding little candles, leading you up the steps to bed.
Her whole family sounds kewl, what happened to her?
Among her problems is not knowing the difference between "being unhappy" and "being depressed." It would seem that a person who believes everything is about "me" is bound to be unhappy when more mature people are thinking of someone else or something else.
I can guess at something else she needs.....
This is an understandably unhappy woman.
Michael Douglas is not looking good.
Only a miserable, self-absorbed, Liberal (like her) could write such crap, and mean it.
heh heh heh
I don`t get too gung ho for holidays either but this article take with others by her reveal a demented,snotty little rich girl that is very shallow.
Getting ones way politically is a very small element of living and these libs who are catatonic over the rejection of their views are just laughable.
Yeah, about as tongue-in-cheek as her last piece of "journalism", in which she ranted against white males -- or the one before that, where she basically slandered her own brother, Kevin, for being a pro-Bush moron. (Actually, Kevin sounds like the only normal one in the Dowd clan.)
I don't fault dowdy ol' Maureen one bit. It's her doctors who are derelict of duty for not prescribing a strong anti-PMS pill. Can't they see the poor woman is suffering?!
Don't worry Moroon, Christmas hates you too.
CZJ is simply gorgeous.
(and boy, that Maureen Dowd is a bitter pill!)
This woman has some serious issues..
Bitterness is a bitch!!!
And now, I leave you with a "present"
And by the way, why does the NY Times have a columnist taking up space to rant about the chilling effects of Christmas when we're engaged in a global war against a different religion altogether? I won't hold my breath for a column on you-know-what-religion from Maureen.
My God, I cannot imagine going through life hating EVERYTHING! I doubt Maureen Dowd has ever written anything that remotely resembles an upbeat story.
She is the perfect example of a liberal:
ALWAYS unhappy
ALWAYS mad
ALWAYS depressed
ALWAYS upset if others are happy
ALWAYS blaming others for her woes
ALWAYS blaming the USA
ALWAYS making the wicked witch of the East look good
ALWAYS wearing a frown
ALWAYS down in the dumps
ALWAYS spewing her same hatred for Christianity
ALWAYS looks in the mirror in the morning and thinks "How can I feel more miserable than usual today"
ALWAYS pissed if others are successful
Liberalism: Boy am I happy I avoided that terminal disease!! Can you imagine going through life completely miserable all the time??
She is still hung up on Michael Douglas....LOL!
I think MoDo is either on the verge of a complete breakdown or a political conversion. Her recent columns (which I only see on FR) have been focused on her family to a very personal degree. I know she intends to be humorous, but she seems to be almost surreal lately, well beyond her normal Bush-bashing obsession. She is even unhappier than Ellen Goodman or Eleanor Clift, but unlike those two, I believe there is some minuscule outside chance that Dowd could switch sides. It's almost like she wants to be more attuned with the rest of her family.
Yeah. Isn't that cute!
Don't you mean Merry Christmas, Maureen???
She sounds like a bundle o' fun at the Christmas party. How many times do you suppose she gets the "I'm-searching-desparately-over-your-shoulder-for-someone- (anyone!)-less-psychotic-to-talk-to" looks while trying to chat?
Now, that's what I call "broad"band..
"Her whole family sounds kewl, what happened to her?"
Must have been dropped by a nurse...
Don't look now MoDo, but......
You've new around here, right?
She's dead serious.
I didn't read it as tongue-in-cheek at all. I think she is bitter and depressed. This column belongs in a woman's magazine like Glamour or Cosmoand not in the Times.
The crack she made about her ex-boyfriends who are now living with other women was the most revealing line of the piece. I am surprised that the Times allowed her to include it......maybe she feels bad because she doesn't have a date for New Years and doesn't have her own kids.
I read that she was dating Aaron Sorkin who wrote "West Wing" ( he also had problems with cocaine)but now he has been seen, according to gossip columns, with a bevy of hot young things.
Wonder what's up with Dowd ? All of a sudden she's writing about her family a lot..
Too late.
She is a bitter about herself and it is reflected in her screeds.
She's trying to convince herself she gave Michael something that he needs while he's living with Catherine.
She's having a major meltown; first she trashed her family about the election and now she mocks them because THEY have Christmas traditions?
Given Mrs. Dowd's obviously cheerful rendition of Christmas spirit (cough, cough), let us sing an appropriate holiday melody in honor of her work.
You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.
You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.
You're a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.
I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.
You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.
Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crockodile.
You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.
The three words that best describe you,
are, and I quote: "Stink. Stank. Stunk."
You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splot
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Grinch.
Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.
You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
Mr. Grinch.
You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce.
Excerpt:
""Thirty-four years ago, I inherited the family fruitcake. Fruitcake is the only food durable enough to become a family heirloom. It had been in my grandmother's possession since 1880, and she passed it to a niece in 1933. Surprisingly, the niece, who had always seemed to detest me, left it to me in her will....I would have renounced my inheritance except for the sentiment of the thing, for the family fruitcake was the symbol of our family's roots. When my grandmother inherited it, it was already 86 years old, having been baked by her great-grandfather in 1794 as a Christmas gift for President George Washington. Washington, with his high-flown view of ethical standards for Government workers, sent it back with thanks, explaining that he thought it unseemly for Presidents to accept gifts weighing more than 80 pounds, even though they were only eight inches in diameter...There is no doubt...about the fruitcake's great age. Sawing into it six Christmasses ago, I came across a fragment of a 1794 newspaper with an account of the lynching of a real-estate speculator in New York City."
---"Fruitcake is Forever," Russell Baker, New York Times, December 25, 1983, Section 6 (p. 10)
[NOTE: your librarian can help you find the complete article]
Maureen, that's mother-speak for "My! But, you've grown into crazy little psycho-bitch."
Bless you....may I suggest, since you dug it up..that you post it as a seprate thread...and put it in Announcements..It is a holiday classic..and everyone should get a chance to see it...IMHO, it's one of the funniest things ever written..
She definitely does have issues, and what's more seems to be the black sheep of a fairly normal and warm family. She seems to be trapped in her self-identification as an intellectual light. If only she knew how she is perceived by the 80% who reside outside her liberal cult's protective NYT bubble.
Mo, take it from me, the bitterness is not worth its price. Repent. Bottom line - you need Jesus, honey.
Southern logic... "When somebody seems intent on driving over the edge, go ahead and let them. Either they'll learn the hard way or you'll get their bass boat."
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