Mouse Droppings #5 (Patreon)

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  ♫

My family has always celebrated Christmas.  Yet, I find myself feeling like a bit of a Grinch this time of year.  I place this squarely on my time spent working in retail.  Christmas decorations would go up after close on October 31st and carols would begin playing over the PA system the very next day and wouldn't stop until January.  Sale preparations, inventory and training would all precede this by two months.  Back to School ends, Christmas hires, training and stock room organization would begin immediately after.  I've seen Black Friday and Boxing Day (Canadian Black Friday but on December 26th -- I had to work through Christmas one year to prep) enough times to feel all of the cheer wrung out of me.  The emotional scars from this stint earlier in my life run deep and have gouged the holiday spirit from me.

I haven't worked in retail for a few years now.  When I managed to get out, I vowed never to go back unless things were so financially dire that it was a necessity.  I've since done office and clerical work and my coworkers that haven't done retail don't understand why I look like shell shocked war veteran when they talk about office Secret Santas or putting up a tree or any of that innocent fun holiday stuff.

Necessity dictated it this year -- I wanted to have enough money to buy my family presents.  I've taken a part time job at a grocer's over the holidays to help.  It's thankfully not consumer electronics, but it's still giving me all of the pangs of my earlier time in the trenches.  It's an extra 12 to 16 hours a week (two to four shifts) but it feels like 40+.  When I get home, I scarcely have emotional energy enough to look after my dog, let alone myself.  I'm sleeping more and trying to put smiles on when I see my family.  There's only a couple of weeks left to go, but it's reopening old wounds.

With my nieces now old enough to talk about their own Christmas excitement, I've been hoping that I could rekindle a little bit of that sense of cheer, if only to share in their joy.  My oldest niece is four, so it's through her that I've been trying to live vicariously. Maybe with her help I can bury the grinchy-snark and embitterment that flows through me when I hear "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" being played.  

I still have to do my holiday shopping.  Had I been thinking ahead of time, I would have done this work stint around the Back-to-School season, ordered everything online and been done with it.  But nope, I've got to find time this week to get to a mall in between writing, stocking shelves and smiling while I get bitched out by an entitled, self-important soccer-mom that's pissed off at me that a freaking grocery store doesn't sell a Christmas Monopoly board game that she was looking for ... or that man that had to be physically pulled from the store by police because an earlier sale ended and he wasn't going to take it.

Christmas is my 'Nam.