Family: Ruining holidays since the dawn of time

Winter holidays are overrated. In a world of selfish, ego maniacal pricks, we set aside two to three months every year in which we can cultivate a sense of contrived togetherness with gifts and useless decorations. I, for one, don't buy it. Anyone who truly believes Christmas is about Jesus and family, rather than mauling the greeter at Wal-Mart for the last set of Rock-em Sock-em Robots is either poor or Jewish. Thanksgiving, ironically enough, is followed by statistically the biggest shopping day of the year; an orgy of uninhibited commercialism, want and greed. And nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to waste precious money on a gift without getting something in return, but you still see jack-holes claiming, "Oh, no...It's the giving that matters to me." Shut up assholes. We all love expensive shit, and we all want a lot of it. you know what I don't want? Family.

As is the tradition every year, I spent Thanksgiving in St. Clairesville OH with family. St. Clairesville is located right on the border between West Virginia and Ohio, and can only be described as that ratty hanging strand on the end of the bible belt. There are no redeeming qualities and the night life consists of a Kroger's supermarket and a 24/7 Wal-Mart. I've never been to Jersey, but I can imagine the people who criticize it have never been here. We're always the only family staying at the run-down old Knight's Inn with a faulty smoke detector, aside from the couple Chevy Suburbans down the row unloading several coolers into their room, which I can only imagine contain dismembered bodies or something equally unsettling. When the rates are $50 a night for two beds and a "continental breakfast," you can expect to be tossed in with a rough crowd. If it's any indicator of the hell I have to suffer though, I'd prefer an evening with these guys than the Thanksgiving feast I'm guilted into enjoying.

Dinner consists of an overcooked turkey, several casseroles consisting of a clever combination of A: Vegetable, B: Cheese product, and C: Some crunchy shit, and a table of store-bought pies. We celebrate in a stark, dingy church basement that has the effect of plunging me into an even deeper melancholy than the thought of a booze-free holiday and dealing with a bunch of ugly children I'm related to but don't know or care about. My family never seems all that happy, and I can't help but assume their attachment to church functions is a direct cause. Being devout teetotalers doesn't help either, and the lack of any sort of hard beverage makes for absolutely zero conversation regarding anything short of marriage, oil changes, or how to deal with a rowdy child. As the only liberal non-parent in the bunch, I make it a point to contort my jaw into the most convincing of fake smiles and sit in the corner drinking old, flat punch wishing at any moment a loaded gun would misfire and catch me in the side of the head.

I find it ironic that Thanksgiving should be celebrated in such a masochistic fashion; so as to remind me that yes, it is possible to remove entirely one's will to live in the span of a day, and that none of the self-righteous bible-beaters known as my family can detect human suffering when it's sitting five feet away. It's common practice for us to go around the table and list what we're thankful for at the end of the meal. It's also common practice for me to slip outside and smoke a cigarette because I'd rather not have to explain that the things for which I'm grateful do not and will never exist in this crummy hell-hole. The list of items that bring me joy (or that I care about, for that matter,) is a short one, consisting primarily of alcohol, sex, nicotine, expensive shoes and a select group of friends who share these passions. Life is too short and too fucking boring to try and make do on clean living, and I'd rather be dead at thirty than alive at sixty and worrying about the catastrophe sure to be brought on by every new black man involved in politics.

Call me a skeptic as well, but I don't like to lose things I care about; an unlikely issue to deal with when one is devoted only to opiates, stimulants and material pursuits. Throughout history, people have never ceased to disagree, separate and die, while alcohol and sex seem to possess an inexhaustible novelty factor. I'm not claiming some moral high ground here, just don't come crying to me when your Aunt Judith dies and I'm still getting wasted on the only family that's done right by me. I realize I sound like an uncaring prick right now, but in my defense, there's a valid reason: I don't care about these people. In fact, it makes me want to dry heave just thinking that somehow I share the same lineage with such a close minded group of stubborn, conservative assholes. Holidays suck. Family sucks. And next year I'm going to do something about it.

I'm spending the holidays in better company, with better food, and enough beer and cider that I'll be talking coherently to my dog by the end of it. I had to think for a minute or two of who I'd spend my holidays with, if the not the cock brigade that is my family, and I came up with a brilliant solution. I ran through a quick inventory of some of my favorite individuals, and realized it's not really such a vast database. "Me" came up as number one, and as a close second; hot Russian girls. Simple enough, I thought. I can enjoy the luxury of a language barrier that'll allow me to pretend I'm completely alone, a team of cooks, and uh, who doesn't love hot Russian girls? There are several other advantages over this years suck fest known as the months between October and January as well. Namely; no gifts, no sobriety, no shit-eating fake smiles on my part, and no sitting alone in a church nursery, writing this and coming up with constructive and messy ways to kill myself.