I have been told that I am unusual and “not like other people” by several I have encountered over the course of my life. I don’t take this personally. Sometimes, actually, it is a point of pride — to be different. I like being the one that has blue and purple streaks in my hair, for example. It’s edgy and non-conformist. I am definitely a rule follower, but I like to push the boundaries a bit.

One rule that many seem to follow in the United States is the one about the holidays — namely, that one just has to love Christmas. I am supposed to love baking holiday sugar cookies; I am supposed to love heading off to the shops to find and purchase just the right Christmas gifts; and I am supposed to love decorating my house, both inside and out. I am also supposed to love the singing of Christmas songs on the radio. (There is, after all, a radio station here in Los Angeles devoted to the playing of Christmas music twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all throughout the month of December.)

Well, I don’t. I don’t like any of it.

I am a Scrooge, if one wants to label me as such. I loathe baking sugar cookies. It takes too much time an energy, especially the frosting of them. I will admit I like the lights. I would have my house lit up like Las Vegas, if I could manage it. And I do have a Christmas tree that I like to put up, trimmed from top to bottom in nothing but Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and other Peanuts Gang ornaments. But I hate shopping, and having to fight for a coveted parking spot at the mall. If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t celebrate at all. It has always been this way, even when I was younger. I just find the whole thing depressing and anticlimactic. Except for one year.

(More to come . . . )