50 Grinches Complain About The Reason They Cannot Stand Christmas 

1. The expectation that you must be around family. Many people have very dysfunctional and abusive people in their families. I get constantly berated at work and out and about how I should do this or that with family. No thanks.

2. I’m at that stage in life where I have lost many people I love. There are a lot of empty chairs at my table AND I MISS THEM. I miss them every day, I miss their smiles, I miss their voices, I miss texting them random thoughts, I miss the inside jokes.

I especially miss them during the holidays, not so much because the holidays have any special significance to me, because they don’t, but because everyone is talking about family and large parts of mine are MISSING. Every commercial and holiday special is a reminder of ones who are no longer here.

But heaven forbid I BE SAD. Heaven forbid I want to cry and smile and laugh and grieve. Heaven forbid I be anything other than plastic and perfect and joyful and all the rest.

Heaven forbid I be human.

3. “When are you finishing school?”

“Why are you single?”

“What are you doing after graduation?”

All this from people who speak to me only during Christmas.

4. The obligations. It’s so artificial. You give gifts to people because it’s expected that you give them gifts, specifically gifts you think they would like. This person got me a gift this year? I have to get them one back. You’re not doing it out of selflessness and love. If you were, you would get someone a gift at literally any point ever to show them that you care and thought they might like something. You’re doing it because you’re told to when you were a child and were reaping the benefits. This one singular aspect of Christmas drags the rest of the holiday down. Spending time with family? Sure. Decorations? Alright. Music? Fine. But this obligatory celebrating of spending money ruins it for me.

5. Traffic. I work next to a mall. Pain in the ass to get home with all the morons out buying presents.

6. Everyone is always stressed out regardless of how hard they try to be festive. Like decorating the Christmas tree should be fun, but no, it can be “fun” so long as the end result is a flawlessly decorated masterpiece. Family dinners should be about coming together, right? Fuck no, it’s about serving the best fucking dinner you could ever serve and you bet your ass you’re going to be slaving away in the kitchen cooking and simultaneously cleaning every nook and cranny in the goddamn house so everyone thinks your house is ALWAYS that clean.

7. Those poorly written Hallmark movies. They have the same plot lines.

8. I hate the materialism that goes into it. Having worked in retail for several years, I was told in multiple years that I ‘ruined Christmas’ because we were out of some thing that was critically important to having the ‘perfect’ Christmas. At time, the customer was shopping the week before Christmas and should have expected that popular items would be hard to find.

I love the family aspects of Christmas but that gets drowned out.

9. I don’t have any family or close friends so it’s a lonely time for me. For those who have family to spend it with and get an opportunity to do fun things, I’m happy for them—but I’m also jealous.

As it were, I work in a job that’s 24/7/365 and have to work on the holiday. People always ask me if I’d rather be doing something else on Christmas. I would, but it’s not an option, even if I had the day off. Leave me alone.

10. It lasts two fucking months. I would actually enjoy it for a week, but why does it have to start midnight of November 1st?

11. There are so many extra people out and about. And they’re all so focused on themselves that common courtesy is pretty much non-existent.

12. The mountains of waste it produces. Mounds of wrapping paper, novelty gifts that no one will ever wear/use/keep, heaps of plastic packaging, the bowls of sprouts and other food that get binned immediately because no one wants to eat them.

13. It’s just that my routine is always fucked!!! Every business like doctor’s offices, government, etc are always not giving a shit either. Everyone has the holiday, family, and travel on their minds. You have to wait for after New Years for everything to get back to normal and get shit done. I just really hate the holidays!!

14. I’m a shite gift giver and it stresses me out.

15. That feeling of depression that comes when you can’t afford to get people the stuff you really want them to have.

16. Having to pretend that my family is the picture perfect family we look like in our Christmas card.

17. I’m a grown-ass married women but I STILL don’t feel like my husband or I have any autonomy…because we don’t have kids.

People expect us to be here, or to be there, or its at the wrong time or its not enough time. We can never seem to make anyone happy.

Last year I tried to leave my sister-in-law’s at 9pm after being there for 11 hours. I said I was tired. Her response? “You won’t know what tired is until you have kids.” Firstly, people with kids don’t have the monopoly on being tired, that’s not a thing. Secondly, great! If you’re tired too let’s all go to bed! She was crying and crying and bringing things up from TWO Christmases ago (related to how much time spent with her family compared to my family). Made me feel like trash.

And I used to love love love Christmas…

18. I don’t want any more THINGS. For Christmas all I want and need is love and respect. Not another stupid item. It seems like love and respect is too much to ask for from some people. That’s why I’m a grinch during Christmas.

19. The MURDER of millions of trees.

20. People like you, judging me because I don’t buy into this mentality that I need a calendar to tell me when to be with my family or spoil my children with gifts.

21. I try to mask my “grinch” emotions as best I can, but I think that everyone who has been through their parents separating (especially after a lengthy, unhealthy relationship) can say that the holidays never feel the same again. To look at a Christmas tree and have your mind automatically jump back to a memory of your parents getting along and laughing together while watching you open presents. Nothing hurts more than to know that you will never have that again and I assure you that, even as you grow older, the memory consistently returns to haunt you. I’m 23 now and have these memory flash at least once a day during the holiday season due to the stimuli of Christmas music, driving past homes decorated in lights, etc. To see the shell of what my family used to be and all of the negative fallout from the separation is enough to turn “the most wonderful time of the year” into the most miserable without a doubt

22. It interrupts my routine.

23. Triggers. Christmas time is super stressful b/c it brings back bad memories and the idea of what “family” should be. It’s like having a cut reopened every year.

24. Tinsel. I find it distracting.

25. I don’t mind Christmas in general but I am so sick of people obsessing over fucking Christmas trees. All I see on Instagram is people getting and decorating their trees. All I hear about on Facebook is “We got our tree!!!” I really don’t care. It’s just a tree. A tree decorated with pretty lights and baubles. Why do people freak out about it???

And then they get so offended when I say I didn’t help pick out our tree and when I get my own it’ll be a fake one. A fake tree?????? You don’t want a REAL LIVE TREE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM??????? No… no, not really…

26. Seeing everyone hang out with their friends, while I’m here all alone.

27. I hate buying gifts for adults. To me, Christmas is 100% a children’s holiday. I adore getting gifts for my own kids, love buying stuff for my niece. I enjoyed buying things for my cousins when they were little. However, gift buying for adults is just a chore. In my family, most of us are blessed enough to just go out and buy the things we want. My husband wanted a gaming computer last Christmas, so he went and got himself one. I needed new boots, so I went and bought them, etc.

Gifts for adults just end up being impersonal crap – candles, sweaters, gift baskets, etc. or things, for the most part, I neither like nor would use. Honestly, I’d must rather just keep the money I spend on that crap in my own pocket and have all the other adults in the family do the same. I think we’d all be happier for it – less time shopping, less money spent, less household clutter.

Yep, I’m a total Grinch.

28. The emotional baggage that comes with that time of year, life has found very creative ways to fuck over my holiday experience in the past.

It makes me very reluctant to engage in them whatsoever. It also doesn’t help that I’m quite anti capitalism and see that the “spirit” of the season is once again optimized for money making efficiency.

29. Collecting food for the needy during the holiday. What about the rest of the year? Are people not as hungry?

30. I wish people happy holidays and they get all up in arms about it’s not illegal to say it! What a shame you should say merry Christmas, blah blah blah (I work in retail.) I get all up in arms about someone wishing me a merry Christmas in like the first week of December, and I’m the fucking bad guy. I’m not christian. So fuck you.

Sorry. That got a little… Something…

31. For me its the lack of parties events because of the assumption that everyone is so busy. It used to be every club, meet-up I was in did something for the holidays. Usually one of those white elephant exchanges. Yeah cheesy but also fun. Over the years those groups dissolved, or changed. Now all the groups I’m in are doing nothing. You ask why and it’s the oh everyone is so busy around the holidays line. The thing is not everyone is. there are just a few people who ruin it for everyone else by going, Oh I’m so busy, I have the kids recital, and the work party, and I have to buy gifts, and get ready to go to my in-laws. Okay fine you are busy (or suck at time management). So you don’t have to go, but you also don’t have to constantly brag about how effin busy you are and be the busy martyr. Plenty of others look forward to these events. We don’t have the giant family, and the In-laws 3000 miles away, or whatever. How do I know? Because these events used to get everyone come out of the woodwork to attend them. So it sucks when you see a holiday event that sounds cool on meetup then later find out its just something the town is having and it’s an unhosted event posted for informational purposes. Uh yeah I can go to a tree lighting by myself and feel like crap all on my own. I don’t need to get a website for meeting people involved in that endeavor. I also hate it when they play holiday music in August but that’s probably been covered in this thread.

32. This is a tough one: the music is god awful (with a few decent songs here and there), but I really hate the tree. We can’t really not have a tree because of my wife and kid, but I still find those fucking pine needles in July.

33. The noise. The noise. NOISE!!

”That’s what he hated. That noise.”

In all seriousness, I fucking hate Christmas songs.

34. The constant fakeness. Oh you are wishing me a happy year from your family- and look you got the fucking dog to wear a Santa Hat- but I dont hear one word from you the rest of the year. That card gets acknowledged for 2 seconds before it is surfed into the recycle bin and forgotten.

35. Getting Christmas cards from people that I forgot existed.

36. People driving around in the mall parking lot looking for a parking spot.

“Just trying to find a closer spot!”

You are going to walk all over this entire mall for the next 4 hours, what’s an extra hundred yards?

37. The exchange of equal amounts of gift cards.

Oh here’s a $50 to a restaurant you enjoy, oh you got me one too? Well that was productive…

38. I hate receiving gifts. I’m the least important person in my life, if I don’t even spend money on myself then no one else should. That money could go to something actually important.

Spend it on yourself, pay a bill, donate to charity. Do everything but get me a gift.

39. People spending money they don’t have to equate it to happiness.

40. I think what I hate most about Christmas is how fake it all is. At its root it’s a Christian holiday superimposed on the Pagan holiday Yule / Saturnalia, and it’s not about giving, it’s about exchanging.

41. Teaches kids that rich kids are better because Santa gives them better presents. Also fails to teach kids that their parents work hard to give them a gift and instead has them praising a fake omnipotent being.

I actually enjoy Christmas because it’s an opportunity to spend time with loved ones and show your appreciation in the form of a gift but the idea of Santa and lying to kids makes no fucking sense to me

42. The god-damned rhyming commercials. Just kill me.

43. Everything.

I don’t want gifts and if I want to buy you something, I’ll buy it and give it to you. I don’t need a reason.

Also, consumerism. I was always the poor kid in my friend group and people would be bragging about their gifts and the money spent and it made me feel like shit.

Visiting family. No one is happy with your decision or seems to care that you’ve had to work in multiple places, take time off, and travel. Skip Christmas? You never hear the end of it. Nevermind people could come visit us.

Most Christmas music is garbage but people like it, I assume for nostalgic reasons. The few good songs you only need to hear like twice and be done with it.

It’s too stressful, it’s expensive. I’d rather stay home and cuddle my pets.

The only good thing is the Thunder play on Christmas day so I have a reason to get away from people.

44. Because I am from Florida. We don’t do snow, snow men, snow angels, yellow snow, any snow. We do however receive thousands of snow birds that make living here harder. We don’t do caroling. We don’t do hot cocoa and slay rides.

But we also have to listen to the cheesy music for 2 solid months. Then the day after Christmas actually begins (its a 12 day feast!), all the Christmas stuff goes into the trash. Then you realize it wasn’t about baby Jesus at all. It was a religious feast that was basically injected with steroids by a culture obsessed with disposable goods and emotional manipulation to make you feel a certain way. None of it feels right.

45. I grew up with divorced parents so I’ve never thought of Christmas as a happy holiday.

46. That every place that I actually want to go to is closed.

47. It reminds me of how much I hate myself, but in a good way, if that makes sense. My family is usually a little more warm toward each other around this time, and my wife’s family turns up being already affectionate to making me want to just fucking cry because they’re saying nice things to me and hugging me. I don’t know how to process that shit. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but being treated with kindness tears me apart. I can handle being threatened, being screamed at, dealing with my own anger, panic attacks, being scared, all that. But for the life of me I don’t know what to do when someone treats me real nice. Like, I don’t know where in my brain to put the way I feel about it and it just fucks with me to where I wonder what’s the matter with me and how my friggin life went so wrong that kind interactions turn me into a sniveling bitch.

48. I spent $800 on gifts this year on people… my family keeps growing and I have announced that I will no longer be giving out gifts next year. It’s not worth it.

49. The Christmas season seems to get longer and longer each year. I was already seeing/hearing Christmas ads around Halloween. At least wait until after thanksgiving ffs!

50. Music in retail stores.