LAUGHTER: Twelve Tips for People Who Hate The Holidays

4. When you are sitting in the airport waiting for your delayed flight or stuck in a traffic jam en-route to visit family for The Holidays, you always wish you had – just – stayed – home. How about you just – stay – home this year?

5.  When you are sitting at The Holiday table listening to “Aunt Jo” tell the same story for the five hundredth time, you might consider screaming, “OH! Put a sock in it!” as you imagine stuffing a turkey drumstick or a Christmas stocking down her throat. Instead, offer her another seriously spiked egg nog. Maybe she’ll just pass out and finally stop talking after all these years.

6.  Do I reeeeally have to play “Secret Santa” again this year? Reeeeally?

7.  Statistics show that “the average person gains five pounds over The Holidays and never ever loses them.” What if we just skipped all the food and special treats this year, gave the money to charity that we would have spent on all that un healthy food and then went to a fun movie and ate popcorn instead? OK. So some people think even popcorn is unhealthy. But c’mon people, at a movie popcorn is a must and we can even overlook the “add extra butter” calories too. It’s The Holidays after all!

8. No one really enjoys visiting The Family over The Holidays. Especially if you have to eat four turkeys at four separate houses with four separate families a la “The Four Christmas’s.”

9. Avoid The Holiday Music. Everywhere. It’s seriously contributing to The Collective Holiday Hypnosis which suggests we must go out and buy more stuff, get into tedious conversations with people we really don’t care about, be cheery at all times and hum along with The Holiday Music with a smile on our faces, no matter how we may really feel at any given moment. Wagner’s “Ride Of The Valkyries” would be a more appropriate musical choice for surviving The Holidays. (go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU to get my drift here)

10.  Remember humor can be used as a weapon especially when alcohol enters The Holidays. Someone always gets drunk and offends someone else. And that someone else usually leaves The Holiday gathering hurt or in tears. Don’t let this happen to you! Put on and wear your emotional body armor at all times. This Holiday Season when someone hits you with an alcohol induced jab or you see that ol familiar poisoned verbal dart coming your way from that obnoxious relative, you can just let it blow on by. With your emotional body armor on and humming “Ride of The Valkyries” you will emerge victorious instead of your usual emotionally bruised and physically battered post Holiday Season Self.

11.  And by the way, feel free to ban whomever you want from your own home during The Holidays. It’s your right.

12.  During The Holidays, always do your best to smirk to yourself in private. Just think of all the awful things you reeeeally could say at any given moment during The Holidays, but so thoughtfully keep to yourself. That’s right. You deserve a medal.

So feel free to share your own personal favorite “Nightmare Before Christmas” here as a comment.  We all know that The Truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to The Holiday’s. And you really would be doing us all a favor by sharing because we’ll all feel a heck of a lot better if you air out just a little bit of your Bah Humbug before The Holiday Season officially starts this year. So go on. Let er rip!

And for those of you who truly  LOVE The Holidays, what’s your secret? Inquiring minds wanna know!