All I Want For Christmas is EVERYTHING!!!

Christmas.

A time for family.

A time for holidays.

A time for presents.

A time for me to get totally pissed off at the world.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a Christmas Rant blog.

The hardest thing for me to decide while writing this blog is what pisses me off the most about what Christmas is in my Western, consumeristic, individualistic, narcissistic world. So I am gonna number them off, in no particular order, to help me not ramble too much and to keep the rage to the minimum.

THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF AT CHRISTMAS TIME:

1) Advertising.

Now advertising pisses me off most of the time. It is a constant in my life that I have become comforted by: when all else is falling apart I know that the TV will be a continuous and stable source of aggravation. But around Christmas time the advertising gurus go into overdrive. Buy this massive TV for your mum or you are an awful child. Buy your child this amazing gift they have never heard of but definitely need otherwise you are the worst parent in the world. 

But there is one thing that gets under my skin more than anything. The ads that tell me that I need to spoil myself this Christmas. If all the gifts from other people aren't enough or aren't really good enough, I should spend copious amounts of money on getting myself diamond earrings or a new outfit.

WHAT IN THE CHRISTMAS FUDGE NUGGET IS HAPPENING HERE????!!!!!

When the flip did we need to buy ourselves Christmas presents?? Have we become so self centred that the one day where OTHERS get to buy us a GIFT, as opposed to the 364 other days when we get to buy stuff for ourselves, is so crap, their gifts are so abysmal and depressing, that we reject them for what we can get because at least we will like that??

Come on people! I mean if you believe in nothing else about Christmas apart from family and fun and gift giving, then doesn't this mentality defeat the purpose? Haven't we killed Christmas, or what we believe Christmas to be, by making it about ourselves? Which leads me to…

2) It's ALL about family.

Family is great. We all love our families….most of the time.

But for some people, including me, we don't get to see our families at all around the Christmas season. This can be brutally painful, especially when it is shoved down your throat every second of the day for about 2 months leading up to the big day.

Happy families, family all together, go visit your family.

OK ALREADY! Let's just make us all feel so much worse for not being able to, thanks.

But not just that, when did family become such an idol of our society? What about inviting in strangers who have no where to go? What about helping the poor or homeless?

I have a Korean flatmate who told me that her tradition for her family and her church every Christmas is to visit the old and sick and to make them happy with gifts and singing. EVERY CHRISTMAS!!! I love this! When was the last time I though of people outside of my immediate circle for Christmas day?

3) Christmas songs.

I swear if I have to hear Snoopy's Christmas one more time while shopping I may start throwing things. I think this is slight post traumatic stress disorder from the year I went shopping in the Warehouse and this song was on a loop. I drove me mental and I can no longer hear that song without wanting to rip my ears off.

But I digress.

Christmas songs are loved by many people but because of my Christian beliefs and my life in NZ I find them increasingly bizarre. My beliefs tell me that Christmas has a meaning, namely the birth of Jesus, and Christmas songs seem so hollow and shallow when they are about presents and missing people etc and not about the actual reason for the event. I also have only ever once had a winter Christmas (in England in my teens) and so songs about white christmas's and running through snow really seem counterintuitive to me, which explains…

4) the New Zealand inability to create their own cultural Christmas

In NZ we seem unable to celebrate Christmas without the fake snow decorations, snow flakes stencilled on walls, snow men, and Christmas songs clearly singing about the Northern Hemisphere. We do have a couple of crappy Christmas songs about celebrating on the beach, and one (which I actually love) called Te Haranui about the first Christmas service in NZ (which will be celebrating 200 years next Christmas!!). But we seem to be so influenced by America and England that we can't break this trend. We will decorate Christmas trees with snow flakes and then go out to the beach for a swim. We will play Christmas songs about reindeer while cruising with our windows down in 25+ degrees C. It's nuts. It's a cultural schizophrenia.

Surely there is a way to do Christmas in a way that is authentically Kiwi without missing out anything important.

5) People who gripe about Christmas without seeing the good in it.

Just when you thought I was the grinch come to steal your fun and joy, I come out with that stunner.

I may have issues with Christmas and what it has become, but I love the idea of getting together with loved ones, celebrating Jesus' birth, swapping gifts, and spending a day having fun. Celebrations are important and this is one worth doing well. I love Christmas. I love going to church and knowing that every where around the world my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are remembering this same moment, that we are joined in celebration on this one day. I love buying people gifts and seeing them laugh and smile when I give it to them. I love decorating and cooking and the build up. I love watching my niece and nephews freak out on too much sugar and presents. I love remembering that I have a God that loves to celebrate too, that Jesus' birth had singing angels and presents and wandering strangers welcomed into it.

But I don't love what we have made it into. I don't want everything I see for Christmas, but I do want a small thing that someone has thoughtfully chosen for me. I don't want crappy, meaningless Christmas songs, but I do want carols that retell the story of Jesus birth. I don't want to make it all about me or just family, but I do want to celebrate it with people I love. 

So what do you want for Christmas, and are you celebrating well?

Run Fat Girl, Run!!!!

The other day I had a crisis.

I wanted to go for one of my mega walks but when I went through the clean washing disaster struck.

My sports bra had broken.

Now if you are a woman like me and perhaps weigh a few big macs more than a happy meal, not having a sports bra when exercising is a problem of monumental size (no pun intended!!). I need a sports bra! I MUST HAVE A SPORTS BRA!

So I went shopping (thank you hubby's plastic card) and I was faced with a dilemma that strikes me every time I look for sports gear:

The world does not want big women to exercise.

Oh believe me, the world TELLS big women to exercise. Read any magazine, health website, or watch TV and very soon you will realise that being big is THE sin of today. You want to lose weight, you MUST lose weight, or you will die in your sleep TONIGHT!!!

If the bombardment of messages finally seeps through our fat layers to our simple minded brains (not me saying this, just the impression I get from the ads) then the first thing you MUST do is buy the equipment, work out gear and shoes.

Equipment: check. Shoes: check. Gear:…..

WHERE THE FLIPPIN' DO I BUY GEAR!!???

Sports clothes come in sizes that may cover my forearm and nothing else. If I am to look at sports clothes and deduce anything it is that skinny people love to exercise, while big people don't go near the stuff.

Which may be true, I mean it wasn't through doing exercise that we put on the weight.

But if you are like me and you are sick of being big, then you need the clothes that won't fall apart as you walk down the road. You need support in all the normal places, plus probably a couple more. You need something that will stop chaffing, will allow air flow, and won't show the sweat patches that arrive as soon as you stand up from the couch (oh yeah, I am sexy).

But when you go shopping, you can find none…of….these.

Bike shorts? Forget it. Good tops? No can do. Sports bra? Only if you are the size of a skinny teenager.

Even if you want to buy scales to keep track of your weight, most of the at home ones only go up to 120kg. Now this is a lot but I weigh more and these scales do NOT like being pushed beyond their limits. I should know, I broke my mothers.

So what is one to do? Believe the ads that tell you to move that lazy ass, or to believe the shops that tell you that you don't really want to do anything more than walking around the said shop and then going home for a lie down.

Luckily I eventually found what I was looking for (at 3x the price of the smaller sizes) (if you need to know where I went message me and I will let you know) but the mixed signals and the frustration of feeling like the world wants something for you but won't support you in it was almost enough to put me off.

This new bra better last forever, that's all I am saying.