12/8/03 11:15 PM: I hate Christmas.

When I was younger, I spent months intellectually warming myself up for the holiday. I would go through the motions of sing alongs in Sunday School, smile nice and pretty for my evil aunt, keep my prepubescent delinquism to a dull roar that I figured nobody could discover. My brain was filled with the power of myth as wielded by Lucas, Roddenberry and Larson. The idea that a fat white man at the North Pole could be cognizant of my behavior seemed no more far fetched than Jedi Knights or Cylon Raiders, so I only hoped that the relatively lower volume of horrible behavior could be seen as a sign of good faith. As I always ended up with presents, I assumed that even the omniscient could be hustled.

As I got older, things began to change. I moved in with my mother after growing up with my great aunt and uncle, and "I'll make it up to you on your birthday" came to replace crumpled wrapping paper and fleeting materialistic glee. The economics of our situation were not great, and I was a goofy kid with a bad temper, so I started getting weaned away from the idea of getting presents.

I was actually supposed to be born on Christmas. My due date was December 25, 1972. I clearly wasn't having any of that -- my mother's water broke on January 16, and I was finally dragged into this wicked world on January 20th. I've been resisting the world -- and to an extent Christmas -- ever since.

In college, I radically shifted my values and beliefs, coming to view Christmas as a double-whammy of bad ideas that I didn't want anything to do with. Starting with the pagan roots in the birth celebration of Nimrod (complete with tree and accoutrements) and the misappropriation of Yeshua's birthday ("Christ" is a Greek word, and "Jesus" is a Greek take on the original name), riddled with faux Christian piety draped over the lies and hypocrisy I saw every other Sunday of the year. If I was pulling a fast one on Santa and Jesus, chances are they weren't as swift as advertised, since everybody else seemed to be doing the same.

While Kwanzaa was closer to my sentiments, it was a long way from my gift laden mornings as a child. The holiday drove me into introspection, which I still think was the right way to go. Once in a while, a twenty would fly in from my mother, but even discovering a whole family I'd never known did nothing to decrease my solitude in the closing weeks of the years.

Aside from my general invisibility, what most began to gall me about this time of the year is its virtual inescapability, at least in the United States. If I turn on the TV news (which I do for comedic purposes more than any desire for information), I'm visually assaulted by poinsettias, sudden splashes of red and green color schemes. Every street is lined with palm trees suddenly wrapped in aluminum foil and ribbon. Red fuzzy hats with spherical white tips have replaced oranges and roses in the hands of vendors. Even the bars where I seek the absolution of karaoke are drenched in holly and tinsel.

Now, I haven't called myself a Christian for more years than I care to remember, and when I set out on my own, this kind of cultural hegemony really stood out to me. What if you're a Muslim? After Ramadan, you'd like nothing more than to relax, but no, you're bombarded by Christian and snow-laden commercial icons. God forbid you're not a wholly assimilated American. Until I consciously disconnected myself from that Matrix, I never saw how much of an imposition it is on ... well, everybody else.

There's also the fact that this is my first winter after my divorce. My ex-wife was big on some kind of "celebrating," and believed heavily in the trappings of beautiful, useless things (often expensive ones). Me? Not so much. As I prep myself to go to the "family holiday dinner" stag this year, I am reminded of the final stages of that deterioration, of how she couldn't hear me, of the horror of that situation.

So between my fairly recent loathing for the commercial overkill, the uncomfortability with the forced bonhomie, the frank and clear cut disgust for the fetishization of what some argue is Christ's message, the loathing of the forced consumption of Northern European pagan iconography ...

I.

Hate.

Christmas.

My fairly tastefully decorated apartment overlooking busy La Brea rings with cold air and dry gas heat (which I hate for other reasons). It's always raining in my head. I'm wading through the well-meaning yet horribly imposing "Merry Christmas!" greetings hurled at me like shuriken. I pull the brim of my fedora low over my eyes, quicken my pace, and wait for the new year to wash it all away, returning us to the gray realities of the rest of our wasted lives.

(Imagine how bad I was when I was a lot unhappier, just bottling it all up!)