It's a Hap, Hap, Happy Holidays Blog

If you've been around for any of the SIX (I missed my blogiversary last week...happy sporadic writing toooo meeeeee!) years I've been writing this thing, you'll know that I love the holiday season.  From Halloween to New Years, I am generally a hap, hap, happy camper and I laugh and smile and chortle and carol and skip and sew and freeetiddle around like an elf on crack.

This year, the freeetiddling is taking a while to get warmed up.  I WANT to have the Spirit

(let's diverge here and offer the standard "I celebrate the week of and after Christmas as a Holy Week, one in which I contemplate the awesome power of the sun and earth at the Solstice and the sacredness of family and hope at Christmas and the magic in black eyed peas, collards, and pork tenderloin at New Years" dislaimer.  I don't care how you celebrate the holidays, if you worship one god or the other or no god at all.  And by "don't care" I mean, I wish you a merry whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate and if you want to wrap yourself in tinsel and call yourself Mary Lou Retton, rock on, my friend.  Rock your bad self on.)

but it seems there are any number of things that keep tripping me up.

There are politicians who think companies are countries, who believe the federal government shouldn't keep church and state separated, who want to outlaw abortion AND child labor laws at the same time.  (How conveeeenient.)  (That would be Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Newt, for those keeping track at home.)

I read a statistic yesterday that one in forty-five children in America are homeless.  (ONE IN FORTY-FIVE.  As I said on FB yesterday, think about the number of kids in your kid's classroom or on his soccer team or in her Brownie troop and ponder that number.)  Later in the evening, I read an article by perhaps the most dense idiot on the face of the planet about how if poor black children just avail themselves of the "cheap" three hundred dollar computers he's obviously being paid to shill for and all of the swanky apps that come with them, they, too, can learn how to best please the 1% and rise above their generational poverty.

I'm reading status updates from people who are claiming that Jesus is the reason for the season and bitching about the president (or liberals or gays or the long lines at HellMart) two statuses later.

I'm reading about our completely useless government which is wrangling over pipelines and tax cuts while real people are hungry or dying or suffering a block from the White House and then reading about the absolute nimrods who want to live in the White House next time around.

I'm reading about people putting signs in their yard talking about God and how disbelief in said god means that you shouldn't live in America.

I'm reading about businesses that are so influenced by the almighty dollars that line the pockets of people who call themselves the devotees of an itinerant preacher who was the earthly son of a carpenter that they will pull advertising from a television show that seeks to educate Americans about a religion not centered around the itinerant preacher who told people to love their neighbors.

I'm reading about Kim Kardashian and Demi Moore and that little Bieber boy in his saggy pants and ridiculous hair.

I'm reading about Donald Trump, people.

And it is bringing me down.

Now, the obvious answer is to stay away from the internets and TV and radio and spend every day trying to bake and clean and decorate myself into a cheery mood.  Fa la la la la la la la la.

However, I have to say that there is a perverseness in me that says, "Why the hell should I have to stay away from MY interwebs because other people keep forgetting the whole "good will toward men" thing or the Constitution thing or the "pick one way to part your hair" thing?  In fact, there is a LARGE part of me that says, with a certain desperation as if in the bottom of a wishing well, "This is MY interwebs and I'm taking them back.  I'm taking them ALLLLL back."

And then I take a few deep breaths and think about how good a Baby Ruth would be right now and I realize that, really, since the interwebs are a big part of the community with which I identify and because I think that they can be tools for good and because I think that this is a season of light and love and family and togetherness and hope and YES, GOLDANG IT, peace on earth, good will toward men,  I want to do something from a not desperate, angry, frustrated place.

So what I'm proposing is this:  from now until New Year's Day, I'm going to turn I'm Not Hannah into a Hap, Hap, Happy Holidays blog.  I will post happy things.  I will find hopeful stories to share with you.  I will remember faithful friends and days of auld lang syne with a smile in my heart.  And I will drag myself up out of my grumpitudiness and spread some cheer, by gosh, by golly.

Wanna join me?  I mean, not in an official "it's a blog carnival oh, my gott, I've got to come up with a post" way.  Just in a "Hey, here's a funny story or cute cartoon or LOOK HOW PRETTY MY YULE COOKIES ARE" way.  I don't care if you are Pagan or Christian or Muslim or Jewish or File Cabinetcentric.  I don't care if you don't put up a tree or a stocking or bake a single cookie.  (Although...y'all.  Why aren't you baking cookies?  Come ON.)  What I care about is giving folks who would rather not read about Newt or Harry or Kim's rank asshattery at a time when we're supposed to be feeling comfort and joy something else to read.

Who's with me? If you are, YAY! Give me the good stuff: Christmas tree stories, cute pictures of kittens, your favorite wassail recipe. Lay it on me. You can lay it on me here OR you can visit the nifty new I'm Not Hannah Facebook Page (that's right...I went there) and lay it on me there. http://www.facebook.com/NotHannah

 If you REALLY want to get all jiggy with the Christmas (or Yule or Kwanzaa or Organizational Day) Spirit, lookee what I did:

Awww, I made a Hap, Hap, Happy Holidays BUTTON.  (This totes makes up for my lack of NaBloWriMo buttons, right?  Riiiiigggghhht?)  Copy that little sucker right there and you can slap it on your blog or any post that makes you feel like you just chugged a few eggnogs down (the good kind...with rum.)  

I'm off to clean the bathroom, mop the kitchen floor, throw up Christmas doodads, and mix about seventy different Christmas cookie doughs up.  Because I am FULL OF THE SPIRIT, YO.

Blink.

You understand that the phrase "throw up Christmas doodads" means "decorate my half-decorated house with assorted spangles and frippery," right?  

Because, you know, I've eaten a LOT of candy canes, but not enough to actually, you know, make me puke.  

Yet.  

Here's a story about Jessica Lynch to take your mind off of that particular image. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/jessica-lynch-former-pow_n_1147802.html

You're welcome and hap, hap, happy holidays to you!