Christma-cuffs

The funny thing about Christmas is, no matter how hard you try to fight it, how hard you try to get back to the basics of the holiday: void of material purchases and crazed-shoppers' syndrome and centered around quality time with those who are cherished and loved (the "jesus is the reason for the season" ideals), there's always a breakdown of the minimalist mentality and an all-too-natural slip into the conventions of the American-bred-and-fed materialist expectations. The Hallmark holiday-ism, so to speak.
Thus, due to said expectations, a small and simple but well thought gesture never seems enough. And spending the day just like any other day makes others mutter some cliché about "its nice not to make a big deal out of it" or some other equally banal sentence with an underlying tone of "what an unfortunate circumstance". The yearly duty of answering the question "what are you doing for Christmas" is equally as torturous as the semi-daily " are you in school?" or "what are you doing these days?" to the 27-year-old overeducated underachiever, a title which I am proudly toting while brewing coffee and serving pastries at my local coffeehouse. Temporarily. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I have a time line, a schedule, some goals, and an agenda. I've packed them up in an orderly fashion to be dealt like flashcards at the onslaught of life-goal questions and applied my holiday mask of fun, family, and positivity. My game face. Now show me to the ring.
As we load up for another holiday-centered gathering my brother says from the background "...that's why I hate the holidays"...