By Maddie Baker
During the holidays, deals appear every other week, decorations litter the stores, and holiday melodies stream through the speakers everywhere. People become more joyful as the temperature declines, but there’s always those special few that think of Christmas as “stink, stank, stunk.” If your soul is “an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of rubbish imaginable mangled up in tangled up knots,” then you are an A+ Grinch.
The first sign that the Grinch is your spirit animal is the intense, recurring desire to slam your hands over your ears perhaps with a pair of cymbals the moment holiday music starts a ring-ting-tingling. That “joyful and triumphant” tune will be stuck in your head until New Year’s Eve, so when people start singing their favorite carols, groaning ensues.
The Grinches of the world also can’t stand their neighbors’ exuberance during December. Sunglasses are required to drive home; otherwise, you risk the chance of being blinded by the neighbor’s Christmas lights in their annual light fight. You ignore the carollers for a reason, and ding-dong ditchers should beware of booby traps on your front doorstep.
Around the holidays, you tend to “eat yourself into loathing while staring into the abyss.” You eat anything available to you, and it’s unclear whether you’re eating out of boredom instead of actual hunger. It’s all okay though because no one will be able to judge you as long as you are alone in your house. The audacity of people to ask you to go out when they know your hectic schedule of eating, sleeping, and repeating. What if it’s all an elaborate prank? If you can’t find something to wear, you aren’t going.
Some are offended by your brutal honesty, but the bursting need to shove your opinions in other people’s faces overwhelms you. Whether it’s an angry post on Tumblr, a not-so-indirect indirect on Twitter, or screaming about who you loathe entirely from the top of Mt. Crumpit, expressing your opinions is obviously more important than people’s feelings.
When you’re starting to feel emotions, your panic instincts are triggered. Your evil grin melts off your face as your stomach fills with butterflies. Your inner Grinch needs helps from a friend (or your dog) whenever abhorrent feelings such as “joy” or “love” filter through your shrunken heart.
Perhaps Grinch really wasn’t such a bad guy: he just needed some alone time. Everybody needs a little TLC from their furry friends. Sometimes you only want to chill with your pet who will love you unconditionally despite the fact that you’re the “king of sinful sots.”
Grinches beware, for once the fateful day arrives, your heart might grow three sizes because you are secretly a softie. Maybe you don’t love the holidays now, but you can appreciate the true meaning of Christmas. You gather with your friends and family because they’ll forgive you for everything, including stealing Christmas.
