12 Reasons it's OK to Hate Christmas

I try not to be too grinchy, but I’m really not a Christmas kind of person. I find it kind of stressful, and never what I hope it to be. I like seeing my family, but I much prefer to do so on a quieter, less jingly kind of day.

The most frustrating thing about Christmas for me is this: no one will just let me not enjoy it. I used to be pretty obnoxious about my distaste for the festive season, but these days I try to be as subtle as possible. But even though I work very hard to not get in the way of other peoples’ enjoyment of Christmas, they just reeeeeally want me to join in. And that would be fine too, but the more I resist, the angrier they seem to get. And I think the problem is that I don’t have a good reason, as such, for not liking Christmas. It’s mostly just that I find it not at all relaxing or pleasant, but you can’t explain that to people when they are trying to get you to wear reindeer antlers in the workplace.

So with that in mind, I have compiled a list of reasons it would be ok to not like Christmas, feel free to use these if you find yourself caught between a singing Santa and an unpleasant co-worker under the mistletoe.

12 Reasons it's OK to Hate Christmas by Lizzyish

1.     Your mother died in a hideous Christmas decoration explosion. They couldn’t tell where the tinsel ended and her intestines began.

2.     You are allergic to wrapping paper.

3.     Your entire family died when a sleigh fell on their heads during a staged family Christmas photo. You survived by eating your way out of the fake snow.

4.     Aliens have abducted you literally every Christmas day since you were born. It’s just tiring now really.

5.     “Jingle Bells” is a trigger from your old military days. The second you hear it, you go into a blind rage and kill everyone you see.

6.     Your parents named you Santa.

7.     You are a devout member of a new Christian denomination that believes Jesus was born on June 17^th.

8.     You work in retail.

9.     You were once a subject in a scientific experiment where you had your eyes taped open and were forced to watch all of those Tim Allen Santa Clause films back to back.

10. You are the eleventh Lord-a-Leaping and thus forever left behind. Leaping, leaping… alone.

11. Seeing the combination of red and green makes you inexplicably, spontaneously shit yourself. People always wish you a “Merry Shitmas”, they cover it, but you know… you know.*

12. You are one of the 105,000 people who will have nowhere to go at Christmas this year.

* You also hate the Rabbitohs

Hum Drum Holidays! I will be taking a short sojourn from le blog and will return in January with more lists like this one, more analysis of my teenhood, other fun stuff, and anything else you might want to see. Let me know if there's something in particular you would like me to do more of/less of/some of in comments or on any of my social mediums. In the meantime, I say funny stuff here, and update you about new blogs and how much I hate Facebook here. 

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year, thanks for reading - you all mean the world to me. 

Lizzy xx

Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Tour!

Europe Tour

Life Advice

I think by now it has been pretty well documented that I like to hoard. So it should come as no surprise to you that I have kept one box for each of the two overseas trips I have undertaken in my life. So these are extra boxes, boxes in excess of the annual boxes. Today’s blog comes to you care of a box marked “Tour. Dec 2004 – Jan 2005”. It contains travel documents and tourist brochures, mementos and weird shit I picked up along the way.

I was very privileged to be a member of the St Peters Chorale. Much more than a school choir, the chorale has recorded and performed music all over the world, and in late 2004 it was our turn. I got a casual job more than a year beforehand and saved up the majority of the cost of the trip, something I was and am very proud of. We spent 4 weeks travelling through England, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Switzerland. We performed to 10 people in some places, 100s in others and notably, to about 1500 in Poland where we were also broadcast on TV. It was an amazing trip, and this box provides a small glimpse into what 16-year-old Lizzy thought about it all. (Actually this is a really weird snapshot and doesn't even really begin to cover half of what we did, a fraction of what I felt or a smidgeon of how important this trip was but anyway, it's good).

Items – Fanta bottles – 2005

It’s always exciting, I think, when you go to a new place and things are the same but different. Here we have a mango flavoured Fanta with not-so-mango colours and a “Vadmalna” flavoured Fanta. I’ve googled it but I can’t find a translation that tells me what flavour that is. I’d love to assume “grape” going by the colours, but with the mango colours as an example, we may never know. The best/grossest part? They still kinda smell like Fanta.

Item – City Info Guide to Wien – 2005

We know Wien as Vienna. There’s a lot of great stuff to see and do in Vienna, and I have a distinct memory of the snow being kind of like little perfectly round balls, like tiny beanbag beans. Please note the sticker advertising the Toilet of Modern Art - that was a cool place. And the art was good too.

Item – Brochure and Ticket to the Salt Mine – 2005

Oh my god, if you EVER go to Europe, promise me you’ll go to the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. It’s a bit scary if like me you are claustrophobic, but ultimately the awe and wonderment you feel vastly outweighs any fear. It’s a giant, underground museum, and the walls are made of salt. The tour guides carry lemons with them in case anyone brings their own tequila, true fact. There’s a massive cathedral carved out of the salt down there, and the salt has been so beautifully polished, it looks like marble. Just fucking go, alright?

Item – Terrifying Kinder child – 2005

The Aryan ideals live on in this child.

If "Kinder" means child, is Kinder Chocolate made from Children?

Item – Post-it Notes from my Mum – 2004

She left these in my luggage everywhere. She’s the best.

She even wrote a love note in the waistband of my jeans

Letters – from my ex-boyfriend – 2005

Ah, I won’t go into too much detail here because I haven’t gotten permission from all parties involved but basically, I was in one relationship when I left for Europe and another when I returned. It was one of those unfortunate situations where I didn’t really want to be in relationship 1 when we left, but I couldn’t very well break up with him at Christmas time and right before we went away together, and I didn’t think that relationship 2 would ever happen. And then relationship 2 looked quite feasible and relationship 1 was really quite unhappy, so I just casually thought it would be a good idea to pull a switcheroo while we were as far from home as it was possible to be, surrounded by other teenagers and on strict behavioural instructions. It’s got to be right up there with one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done*. The letters range from being exceedingly angry to fairly forgiving, epitomising, I think, how strange it was to play out big emotional changes while in a sort of suspended reality – a reality where we could be arguing in the snow, then singing in a concert 20 minutes later and laughing on the bus an hour after that.

* Though in saying that, relationship 2 went quite well for quite a long time afterwards and the boy from relationship 1 did some pretty fucked up shit later on so… I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, I should stop trying to find absolution for shit 16-year-old Lizzy did.

Item – Fudge Kitchen Wrapper – 2004

Yes! Jim’s fudge kitchen! This was a place in England that made some of the best damn fudge I have ever tasted. And they made it all right there in the shop. 

A bunch of people from the tour asked to see Jim (presumably to thank him for his delicious fudge) and the guy behind the counter said, “ah… Jim’s kinda like Yoda” ... “in that he doesn’t exist”.

Item – Crystal Worlds Brochure – 2005

Is this not the most terrifying face you’ve ever seen? Even more terrifying than Kinder child? I saw this face in real life. Nothing can really prepare you for how weird the Swarovski Crystal World is.

And extensive counselling can't make you forget

Item – Arty sugar packets containing what is now almost 8 year old sugar – 2005

Gross.

Totes put them back in the box

Identification Please

Totes relevant... read on.

For some reason, I started thinking about who I am today. I had this rather profound thought while waiting for a burger at The Northside Convenience and Take Away shop (home of Dalby’s best burger). Who am I? Or more specifically, how do I identify? With what groups am I most strongly linked?

Some people first and foremost identify with their nationality. Which I understand; being Australian is great, and I really love living in this country. But I don’t think I’m particularly patriotic, I don’t think we’re *better* than others or that we should keep our stuff and our culture all for ourselves. I’m certainly not opposed to our culture changing or becoming “less Australian” and I couldn’t give a shit about any of our sporting teams.

Others feel strongly about their gender. Men are real men, women are real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (with compliments to Mr Adams). Whereas I see my femaleness as a fact, not a lifestyle. It’s just a thing. A thing that I’m ambivalent towards. I don’t particularly love being a lady or doing “lady’s things” but I have no desire to grow an extra appendage and start loving aforementioned sports teams and other such “man things”. I’m a girl, but it doesn’t define me.

I think probably I most strongly identify with being Gen Y, which is a weird thing to say I guess, given that it’s often thrown about like a dirty word. But I like being young and I like being into technology and I like knowing about new things and trying new things pretty much just because they are new. I am not ashamed by my addiction to social media or my inability to do anything without telling as many people as possible about it. These are things I am, actually, proud of.

I also identify strongly as a nerd. I like things (books, movies, shows etc), and lots of those things are considered nerdy. But more than that my like of those things isn’t a passing, “oh yes I saw that it was good”, it’s more like “OMG DID YOU GUYS SEE THE NEW EPISODE SEND HELP IT WAS THE BEST THING OF MY LIFE I’M GOING TO WATCH IT AGAIN”. So yeah, I’m a nerd. It’s a good thing to be.

I guess I feel like I’m floundering a bit at the moment, because while it’s great to be a Gen Y nerd, I feel like I have a lot more in me; a lot more things I could be.

I care about the fact that our world is still filled with bad things like slavery, poverty and disease. I don’t like how we farm animals, or how we treat our environment. I’d like to do things about these things, I’d like to identify as the kind of person who takes action in the face of such things.

I’d like to identify as a writer, I’d like to be brave and stop making excuses and discipline myself to write.

I’d like it if the job I did was something I could identify as, and be proud of. And I’m hoping that as I embark on a new adventure of studying next year that “primary school teacher” can be a thing that skyrockets itself to somewhere near the top of the “things I identify as” list.

I want to be the kind of person who gardens, who keeps animals, who writes, who eats healthily, whose actions make a difference, who is conscious of the environment and the world, who has fun, who makes people laugh, who loves.

I did some gardening today. So I’m on my way. 

A Million

“Do you have enough space back there? I have like a million leg room”.

You know how sometimes you just develop your own language, and your friends know the language, so it just becomes so normal that you forget it’s not real language? I went on a road trip with some new work friends on the weekend (which is why this blog is late). I said the above sentence and the three people in the car laughed like it was a joke.

“A million leg room haha.”

“A million undetermined units of legroom, hahahaha.”

It wasn’t a joke. That’s just how I speak sometimes.

I’m a bit of a show off, and an orator. I love to tell a story, love to have people listen to me, to laugh at my jokes (to read my blog). But sometimes, new people laugh at things I wasn’t intending to be funny. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just a strange realisation to have in the passenger seat at 100Km per hour on a country road.

It’s one of the things I miss most about my Brisbane friends. Having and developing a language of our own is one of the best ways I’ve ever felt close with people. I love words, I feel in many ways they are almost holy, but I also love to mess with them. Years of living and working and studying with friends have produced a special lingo over which we all subconsciously bond. Meanwhile, Boyfriend and I shorten everything. We’re not seeing a movie, we’re “going to the moves”, we don’t eat dinner we have “the dins”. These aren’t even particularly sickening, coupley things, we’re just quite lazy (or “laze”).

And it’s not as if my new friends don’t do it too. The phrase “legit strat” was used over the weekend, and we all laughed and discussed how it would be silly to say “legitimate strategy” (especially when I think we were discussing sand castles). But of course the speaker was just using a turn of phrase, not trying to make a joke. I wonder if he felt like it was a bit weird we all laughed and dissected his words. Maybe he says “legit strat” every day. We just don’t all speak the same language yet.

I’m reading Paper Towns by John Green at the moment (shh I haven’t finished yet, no spoilers). One of the major themes is about how we see others. Do we see them through a window, something of their creation that allows us to see certain aspects of their personality? Or do we see them through a mirror, as variations of ourselves? The main character hasn’t quite decided yet, but I think it’s a combination of both. Language is one of the most subtle ways we can portray ourselves, yet is the most present, we use language almost every moment of every day. It is also one of the more obvious tools we use to create our conceptions of others. Do they speak like me? Do they use words I understand? Are they gentle, abrupt, silly, loud, intelligent, crass or rude?

So maybe it’s not about windows vs. mirrors, maybe it’s about megaphones vs. sounding boards.