Curious how his readers feel about this, Billy Hill poses a question to you:
What do you prefer, Thanksgiving or Christmas and why? Actually, just what is your favorite holiday and why?
Billy Hill prefers Thanksgiving because, it is all the wonder of Christmas (sans the magic of Santa and elf on the shelf) but without all the commercialized crap and stress of buying presents and conjuring up a smile and a look of surprise and wonder as you open another package containing something you would never purchase for yourself in a million years. Yet, we buy into the commercialization of Christmas every freaking year. One year, Billy Hill is really going to do it, he is going to declare to the world "Do NOT buy me any gifts for Christmas cause I ain't buying you anything" and then just sit back and enjoy the turkey, deviled eggs and strawberry pretzel salad just like Thanksgiving.
One last question. What is your favorite Christmas word?
Let Billy Hill give you a few examples to ponder:
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Noel, Santa, Snow, decorations, carols, presents, Christmas Tree, fruit cake, stocking, Grinch, The Night Before Christmas, candle light service, reindeer, Bethleham, figgie pudding, Deck the Halls, Jingle Bells, Snowman, Peace, Holly, Silent Night, Mistletoe . . .
Billy Hill would like to hear what it is and why. And as always, Billy Hill has his very own.
This is what captures it for Billy Hill. But you see, the freaking commercialization of Christmas is robbing the JOY out of it all. Let me give you a perfect example. You see, Billy Hill likes to decorate for Christmas, not in a tacky way but in a redneck classy way. And Billy Hill wanted his theme this year to be JOY. And. a few weeks ago, at a local hardware store, it just so happens that Billy Hill found the perfect decoration to present this theme - a gargantuous JOY. But, it was not for sale, it was just on display. So, Billy Hill searched the Internet but he came up empty. Well, Friday night Billy Hill stops in again to get a few other things and lo and behold, the display had a price tag on it - $1200. "Well crap" thought Billy Hill. So at that point he decided he was just going to make a big JOY sign out of wood, paint and Christmas lights, but as all of his grand ideas, he knew it would not come to pass cause he is just too busy. But the clerk in the store saw Billy Hill taking pictures as a model and said that the display would probably go on sale. Billy Hill said he would buy it for $500 and so, she took his number and said she would call. As Billy Hill was in the checkout line with a bronzed Santa statute, the clerk approached him and said that the manager had one more display in a box and said he would sale it to Billy Hill at an acceptable price. So, Billy Hill waits for 30 minutes until the clerk comes around wheeling a gigantic box that Billy Hill thought was a refrigerator at first but it turned out, it was his box of JOY.
So the 85 pound bundle of JOY was loaded into Billy Hills truck, money was exchanged and Billy Hill was off to the Billy Hill headquarters. Well, as most things these days, Billy Hill is sure that this was made in China and, well the assembly instructions sucked. Nothing seemed to fit where it was supposed to fit and everything was large and bulky and I am sure that the cars and pedestrians passing by found this to be quite a humorous spectacle. But three hours later, covered with glitter, two bleeding fingers, nearly frost bitten, Billy Hill plugs in the display for a grand illuminated JOY. But by this time, Billy Hill was just pissed off that he spent three hours in labor, cussed out the entire country of China and most Chinese-Americans and Billy Hill had an epiphany. This is the whole damn problem with Christmas. See, Billy Hill just spent an ungodly amount of money for a box of JOY for Christmas and at the end of the day, he was totally void of JOY. The JOY he purchased and assembled completely robbed him of his true JOY. At least for the moment. And so, once again he came to the realization that he got snookered by the commercialization of Christmas and totally lost sight of what the whole Christmas story is about - Glad tidings and great JOY. So in penance, he retreated to his kitchen and made 60 breakfast eggrolls (yes, Chinese food as penance) for his Sunday School class and reflected on the words that a friend had sent him earlier this year:
Don't invest in things, invest in experiences because, the joy we receive from things quickly dissipates but as we reflect on experiences and memories, they just get grander and grander. And so Billy Hill, re-centered and refocused vows that he is NOT going to let Christmas bite him again but, we shall see how he does cause we have 13 days to go yet.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Billy Hill here, I like it neat
JOY to you and your family
