So, I'm A Grouch This Christmas.

It's a scant few days away from one of the biggest holidays in the whole year, and I have yet to get that elusive Christmas spirit. I had a couple of hours or two during the last week that I actually started humming a catchy tune, but it disappeared pretty quickly.

Maybe it's my age, and the fact that the nearest small children in my family are five states away. Maybe it's because I'm unemployed and broke, and it's getting tougher and tougher not to call in my cards as a self-employed artist and start working as a Wal-Mart greeter (at least that company isn't filing for bankruptcy).

Maybe it's because I'm just totally and increasingly unhappy in my personal life. I mean, I can't stay positive 24/7 anymore.

I'd like to enjoy the lights on the houses, and the trees I spy in the windows of strangers' houses as I walk my dogs every night. I smile at these people who wear red and green and lots of cute Christmas pins on their winter jackets.

I'm not a grinch. I've bought stocking stuffers for everyone on my gift list, and enjoyed doing it. I just feel like I'm missing something.

Something intrinsic. Something vitally important. 

Something that's missing from my heart or my soul or my brain.

And I'm tired of watching Lifetime on TV trying to understand what in the hell it is that I'm not g-e-t-t-i-n-g.

And I'm tired of hearing people preach to me that it's "not about the gifts," and it's "not about the commercialism," and it's "not about this and that."

We all try to get together with our families (and extended families) any time we can, both financially and distance-wise, so why is this time of the year so important? Because Christmas is all about family? Hell, Easter is about family. Thanksgiving is about family. Birthdays are about family. What is it about Christmas that makes it so grieviously devastating if you cannot be "with the ones you love." Because, Christmas is about families.

Well, I personally agree with those families that find places to get away from other families by taking a cruise for that particular week. Or, if you're from a tropical climate, you go where the snow makes you have some sort of wintery feeling, while you're snuggled in a nice, cozy lodge, surrounded by aspens and cups of warm Irish cream. Lots of Irish cream. What trees?

I'm so ready to be somewhere else at Christmas. Maybe that can cure me of this holiday mildew, this Christmas cancer. I've been in Ireland on Halloween and it really opened my eyes to the true meaning of the holiday (although there are some who think that Halloween is evil and satanic, it most certainly is not). I saw the darned cutest little kids with homemade costumes (not a Hannah Montana or a Superman in the bunch - rather, begger-mans, scarecrows and one little angel dressed as a "scullery-maid.") They plowed in to the pub my husband and I were eating a hearty Shephard's Pie in, and asked us very politely for a coin or two. Now, this was a pretty remote area of Ireland, a coastal village, and truly these kids must have either been carted in from one of the rural farms, or walked a great long distance in the dark to get there, so I felt they certainly deserved a Euro or two. Everyone who had a home had lit pumpkins (no carved faces, just holes - a real candles). Very mystical.

Perhaps I should try to get to London one year, where they still decorate all the windows with snow scenes, and have carrolling in the streets. Or perhaps visit colonial Williamsburg. Somewhere other than couches of relatives, with predictable "remember when" stories in which I wasn't present or celebrating traditions established by some other previous spouse.

I used to love Christmas. Just not so much anymore.