Post Xmas post

Well, another Xmas has come and gone.  The real Santa Claus has forsaken me once again.

Maybe it was the late Thanksgiving, the warm December with 8+" of rain, binging Crunchyroll, or just feeling older - but Xmas 2025 felt the least like Xmas yet.  It could also be the strain from putting up lights and getting decorations out from a closet.  i'm not sure it has really felt like Xmas since my older sisters started moving out when i was a less experienced kid.  

i hoped that someday i would have kids and grandkids to live Xmas vicariously through (or at least approximate the wonder in their eyes).  Like that was ever going to happen.  In the past i could get closer to the mindset of a kid, now i can't even do that.  "Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me" (that song in Wayne's World).

i've never been big on the giving part - someone needs to get in order for someone to give.  Giving has an element of reciprocity and uncertainty (what to give, what would they even want) that i do not really like.  Let's just say i don't like scenarios with open ended parameters.  i don't really know people, they don't know me (i'm ok with that).  Maybe my siblings/mother would have got something if i would have won the lottery (alas, it was not to be - yet).  Who am i kidding, in that scenario, it would be cash not a traditional gift.

My alleged mother and younger sister (always assumed i was created in a lab by aliens, it is the only origin story that makes sense to me) have taken on the role of Santa Claus (mostly via Amazon).  Xmas Eve was for gifts from the family.  Xmas was for Santa Claus.

Maybe the AMZN wish list and gift cards diminishes and the "magic" of Xmas (making it seem more perfunctory).  It felt different when my alleged brother got me Bon Jovi's Keep the Faith or some baseball cards and my sisters threw stuff together.