Negative Nelly

So I don't like Christmas—at all. It's a boring, cold, and miserable holiday. Do I sound like Scrooge? Yes I do and Jimmy-Crack-Corn I don't care. I am just being honest. Christmas is phony to me... you pretend you're happy...you pretend you're best friends with your family, even though you barely speak the rest of the year (my cute parents excluded), you pretend you don't notice the commercialism, you pretend you don't notice the war, poverty, abuse of everything....you pretend you don't notice how absolutely freezing cold it is outside and you pretend you don't notice all the winter weight you're gaining...

I am a Negative Nelly and I feel quite positive about that.. I guess just because that term is so cute to me! Okay so I will turn this Christmas frown upside down... what do I like about this time of year? Because there has to be something, right!!?? Well I do LOVE getting presents and I love giving presents just the same...I wish I had more people in my life to give to...and children. Kids are fun this time of year and I know not a one.

I like the Christmas songs "You're a Mean One Mister Grinch" and "Christmas-Christmas" by the renowned Alvin and the Chipmunks.... I like the movie the Christmas Story and I really love Han's Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl....and the girl even dies at the end of the story! Now that is a Christmas play for this Negative Nelly—forget It's a Wonderful Life, Han's Christian knows how to rock it! I mean just look at the original Little Mermaid story...it's beautifully tragic.

Illustration by Odessa11
So I remember, during one holiday season when I was about 10-years-old, going to the Children's Theater on a class trip for the play The Little Match Girl. I was mesmerized. Here's this little girl, so poor and poorly dressed—she has bare feet in December! She is forced to sell matches on the street and scared to go home because her father beats her and to stay warm she must strike her matches. This is when the magic begins... Upon the first match she has a small vision—a light flickering. Soon, with each strike, she begins to see a life she longs for, complete with a cooked goose, a decorated Christmas tree, candles, and, finally a vision of her smiling grandmother—the only person who has ever loved the Little Match Girl. And with that last match, the Little Match Girl huddles in an alley, in the city, all the while Christmas shoppers past her by, and she dies! It's SO sad, but so telling.

I guess with my own Negative Nelly attitude and recollection of a favorite Christmas story, I suppose what I am saying is Christmas to me would be a lot nicer if we all would remember things like dying Little Match Girls.