My perfect Christmas would be spent on a tropical beach...

... in a place no one has ever heard of Christmas. I'd share fish I caught and cooked.

My parents retired and escaped to that kind of life. Their "Christmas Trees" are pieces of driftwood decorated with handmade ornaments and Christmas cards from family, friends, and neighbors...

Yeah, I know what this Christmas Holiday is about. It's the great party before all the Northern Europeans start stacking up their old and infirm like Popsicles in the shed waiting to bury them come spring in the rain and the mud.

We don't have a birth certificate for Jesus, don't know the date of Conception when the Virgin Mary exclaimed "OH GOD!."

I try not to be a drag everyone else down during the Christmas Holidays, but it ain't easy.

In my personal universe I don't like to buy stuff unless I must, and I don't like people buying stuff for me.

I like to find stuff. I like to make stuff. If somebody finds stuff or makes stuff and gives it to me as a gift, that's okay too. But please, don't buy me stuff, unless I NEED it. (That would be food, shelter, or medicine. Those I've got now, so I don't NEED them.)

I've made my peace best I can with the Holiday, often cooking Christmas dinner.

Receiving or purchasing "gifts" some random stranger made, perhaps some wage slave in China, just makes me feel sad and cold.