The Pecan Park Eagle

What's Your Houston Holiday Hassle?

Not all of us are hassled by the holiday season in Houston, but some people have some seasonal peeves, and some of these are generic to any up and running American community. Others of which are distinctly Houston. Here are a few possibilities. We invite you to comment if any apply to you, even if you don’t live here. We’d also will love hearing from everyone who has no problem with December into January as just a great time to celebrate, travel, or chill at home. Your observations are important too.

Here’s a round-up of the usual subjects. Are any of these 20 reasons among your pet peeves at holiday time?

(1) Christmas shopping and fighting the mall traffic, especially if you live in Houston, anywhere near the Galleria, The Woodlands, or Memorial City.

(2) Sending and receiving holiday cards, even to and from people you’ve never even met.

(3) Decorating the house with a tree and other lights and stuff that has to be taken down in January, February, or March.

(4) The money spent on presents, parties, and travel.

(5) Out of town guests who come too early and stay too long.

(6) Christmas cooking, eating, and the assault upon your diet and waistline.

(7) End of the year work tasks that have nothing to do with joy and peace or good cheer.

(8) Cleaning the house for Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa and then messing it up again celebrating those reasons.

(9) Drinking in ways you normally don’t and paying the price for whatever a serious over-indulgence is for you.

(10.) Picking up and delivering guests at the airport.

(11.) Financial Roulette: Spending money that may not be there in January to cover holidays bills and purchases due for retirement when the credit card bills come after you.

(12) Driving to Galveston to see “Dickens on the Strand” and then having to go home because you couldn’t find a parking space and then remembering that they didn’t have this problem in the 19th century because there were no cars to drive and take up all the space.

(13) News stories about lowlifes stealing nativity scenes or ripping off presents from the tree of poor folks or anybody, but especially poor folks, at Christmas time.

(14) Making up stories for the kids. Best example, having to explain to your believer-kids why you keep running into Santa Claus every place you go and then giving them the cover story that all but one of these same red and white suit folks you keep seeing are really helpers. Then, when the kids ask you which one was the real Santa, you tell them, “That’s for you to figure out. It’s called ‘The Christmas Mystery,’ Be good and get it right, you get what you want.  Be good and get it wrong, you don’t get so much. Be naughty and get it right, it still doesn’t do you any good. You blew your chances being naughty, so we hope naughty was worth it. Now stop talking so much and finish your Big Mac. I’m trying to drive here.”

(15) Waking up on Christmas morning and the Houston weather feels like it’s the Fourth of July and that just drains the Mel Torme out of your Christmas spirit.

(16) Nothing to watch on TV but meaningless college bowls games, Christmas specials, and re-runs of “Miracle on 24th Street” with Baby Natalie Wood and “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart.

(17) Christmas music that helps you feel lost, abandoned, disconnected from love, and blue as a Smurf character, but not nearly as happy.

(18) Rappers on New Years Eve who never ever heard of Guy Lombardo.

(19) If you have one, the thing you dislike the most about the holiday season, if anything, even if you live somewhere other than Houston. At, least shoveling snow on Christmas morning is always a very dim-lifted priority in Houston.

(20) What makes the holiday time a happy one for you, if anything, and why? We’d like to hear from some happy people too.

Merry Shopping, Everybody!