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I’ve always had a hard time with Christmas. I’m not so much selfish as self-centered – I’ve never really fully bought into the idea that giving out gifts for this one day of the year (excepting the annual birthday) is a good enough excuse to be ignored on other things that matter for the other 364 days. 3/4ths of the gifts I’ve ever received in the past I had no need for and therefore had no idea what to do with, and so they just piled up in my room like dirty laundry as the years went by, adding to all the other manners of filth there until I had to throw them out or give them away, or risk dysentery.

I was sold on the idea when I was younger and stupid, when I received lots of gifts every year by relatives and godparents who reminded me they were relatives and godparents only when Christmas season began. The number of presents under the Christmas tree had always appealed better to me than what those gift boxes actually contained, because they weren’t the kind of gifts a nine years old-or-below kid could appreciate. Like grown-up jewelry, or perfume and lotions. (I got a lot of perfumes and lotions as a kid. I think this was people’s way of telling me back then that I smelled pretty bad as a tot.) I didn’t even think it odd what a big white fat Caucasian guy was doing in a country of dark-haired dark-eyed short folk where chimneys were non-existent, or why we set up pine trees every year even if it wasn’t native to the Philippines.

But I grew older, and the thrill of presents finally begin to lose their appeal along with Christmas. There were still the dinners and celebrations spent with my mother’s side of the family (my father’s parents and sisters were varying stages of psychotic, which is another story altogether) which was always good, because I’m especially close to my cousins, but I don’t see my parents’ (read: my mother’s) insistence that Christmas should be spent like Christmas. “Jesus wasn’t even BORN in December.” I pointed out once. “Yes, but we should celebrate the spirit of Christmas anyway.” She said.

Thank God Christmas only comes once a year. But I still don’t get it either.