Happy Pig Casings.

Warning: This post contains snark. If you are allergic to snark, please do not handle this post.

“I’ve come to loathe the holidays. Well...just the shit that comes with them. Kinda like...a platter. Turkey is good...but then someone sprinkles chitterlings on the plate and it’s hard to recall what you enjoyed because it's covered in pig shit casing.”  - RPM, in a random IM conversation with this man.

The holidaze.

They are upon us. And I don’t know one soul that doesn’t have some feelings of dread about one or many elements of them. In fact, since I was about eight, I think the dread has almost always exceeded the bliss for me.

The basic principles of the season are beautiful. To give thanks. To celebrate all that we have.  To give to others and to be mindful of our blessings. To experience a deeper gratitude. That is our “turkey.” Served on a big platter with mac’n cheese, collard greens, candied sweets and whatever other holiday culinary delights you might fancy. Wholesome yumminess slathered with gravy. Or so it should be.

Year over year, what it actually becomes are plans, agendas, travels and meeting others expectations of what you should be doing/feeling/giving/saying/believing...or fighting passionately to do otherwise. As we make our annual plans for who is going where and why, juggling expectations and trying to manage the ones we’ve built, I feel so many around me immediately suppressing all of their thoughts for fear of making someone else uncomfortable. Old challenges resurface, old behaviors get dusted off and worn like stiff, starched holiday suits that were ill-fitted twenty years ago, and completely ridiculous, today. We’ve become so desperate to at least pretend we’ve got this magical holiday thing down, that instead of enjoying them, we just pray we can survive them without seeing the ugliness in others or ourselves.

Pig shit casings. My holidaze are buried under things I can’t stand. And I am tired of feeling the annual sadness in knowing exactly when, where and how they will fail to be something like what we’re often told they should be.

I will find my charities and events that remind me of that “good” feeling I’m always in search of. I will put up my decorations and stare dreamily into my fireplace. I will seek out the joy of the season in faces of little ones not yet infected with our nonsense. I will cuddle up with my sister as we nurse drinks and hide from expectations, snarking about the absurdities of our dysfunctions dressed in holiday lights. We will laugh. We will cry. We will remind each other that it will all be over soon enough so we can resume our regularly scheduled programming. We will toast another year of survival.

And that’s where it seems many of us are landing. Tired of pig shit casings, we’re resigned to surviving the holidays, as opposed to finding any deep meaning or fulfillment in them. Oh...there are the ones who will put on big written and visual productions about the wonderful, perfect, joyous (don’t forget blessed, a word that makes me slappy if there ever was one) holiday that they created with their own might and will. And this will be designed to demonstrate to you, what you too can achieve if you learn to capture their “spirit.” But...I call, bullshit. Those folks are just conditioned to wearing their masks because it’s easier then doing otherwise. They are the ones I shall throw my pig casings at with fervor and zeal.  

Let’s face it. Many of us weren’t equipped to handle much of the “casing” that’s been handed to us by way of tradition, family dynamics or expectations. We’re all expecting to fall short somewhere. Instead of dashing through the snow in that sleigh, we’re stepping lightly, praying not to set off any snow mines. Picking and choosing our battles, biting our tongues and hoping the liquor cabinet helps us on our way to jolly.

And there is something completely hilarious, ironic and unbelievably sad about that.

Editor’s caution: This is not a cry for help, or an invitation for any helpful tips on how to make the holidays more “ho-ho-happy.” Writer has been known to bite.