Page 44 2013 Home for the Holidays Special edition of LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com
Is there any help for
the Christmas
curmudgeon ?
O
ut there among the general population is a class of people
who are known as “Christmas curmudgeons.” They come
in both male and female models, but the female Christmas
curmudgeon is rare. Most women seem to love Christmas and all
its pageantry. The curmudgeonly attitude is mostly a male phe-
nomenon
Wikipedia defines a curmudgeon as “an ill-tem-
pered person full of stubborn ideas or opinions.”
Since we are strictly addressing the Christmas
curmudgeon in this article, we need to differ-
entiate these folks from your everyday, run-o’-
the-mill curmudgeon. We are not speaking of
the full-time ill-tempered person, but rather one
who becomes ill-tempered at the mere mention
of anything to do with Christmas. The Christmas
curmudgeon may or may not be pleasant most of
the year, but becomes especially more ill-tem-
pered the closer the calendar is to Christmas.
A symptom of Christmas curmudgeonry is that
a person begins to get visibly and audibly upset
when the Christmas decorations go on display
in July at Wal-Mart. They begin to complain
when they hear the post office reminder to send
cards and packages early, and they even get all
worked up when there is any mention of spend-
ing money for anything to do with Christmas.
Christmas curmudgeons not only complain
about Christmas and decorations and gifts and
parties and Christmas cards and Christmas trees
and Christmas carols and Christmas gifts – yes,
that’s twice over on the gifts part – and even
Christmas cookies (although they will usually
eat the Christmas cookies). And anything Christ-
masy, they also vociferously want to opt out of
all those usual celebratory items.
And we drag them along, kicking and screaming,
to buy presents, attend parties and even go to
Wal-Mart, claiming that if they would let them-
selves, they might even have a good time. But,
