Well people, it’s officially December. I’ve recently developed a love/hate relationship with this month, and I can’t decide if I should be excited or not. We college students get to spend the bulk of it furiously studying for finals and catching up on a semester’s worth of work we really shouldn’t have gotten behind in. But when that’s all over, we’re rewarded with a trip home, CHRISTMAS and a solid month of break.
Most people across the country love December and everything the month entails. This love really starts to emerge the day after Thanksgiving. Our incredible obsession with Black Friday has turned the day after Thanksgiving into a national event that almost eclipses Christmas itself.
I think it’s a pretty good sign that people are gearing up for Christmas when they bring pepper spray into Wal-Mart with the intent of using it to gain a competitive advantage against other shoppers. A pepper spray incident actually happened…. WTF America? Using pepper spray on those UC-Davis students was low, but now Bertha—confined forever to her extra-wide Hoveround—is upset because she got pepper sprayed at Wal-Mart and had to pass up incredible holiday savings on Slim Jims and chicken pot pies. Tragedy.
Although I’m grateful I get to avoid any encounters with crazed moms armed to the teeth with pepper spray, there are several pitfalls to spending the majority of December stuck in class. Instead of spending the month decorating a tree, buying presents, watching Christmas movies and other jolly activities, we’re confined to the windowless Humanities building hunched over a scantron debating whether the answer is A, B, A and B or none of the above. For those of poor souls with five classes that all have cumulative finals, December is particularly daunting. Just the thought of my next few weeks fills me with an indescribable dread. Sorry professor, but at this point I have zero recollection of anything that you said in September, nor any interest in relearning all the material covered. Blerg.
Even the usually fun task of finding presents for everyone is ruined by the fact that UW insists on spreading exams out to the very last day possible. We have finals on Dec. 23? Really? I promised myself last year I would be a little more thoughtful in the gift-giving department the following year, but, alas, I sense that I will once again be reduced to buying shitty presents on Amazon so late that I have to pay up the wazoo for overnight shipping.
However, as hard as I try to maintain my bitterness toward the season, I find it hard to actually be upset. Although I will continue to bitch to whomever will lend an ear, so many great things are coming this December that make the pain all worth it. The Badgers WILL earn another trip to the Rose Bowl on Saturday, and basketball season is getting into full swing. We’ll all get to see snow for the first time in a while, which comes as a relief to most of us northerners. And when we’re finally done with our three weeks of utter hell, we get to go home for a month, eat an unnecessarily large number of Christmas cookies, greet our pets with a ridiculous amount of love, and get presents we don’t need but want oh so much. Easy on the pepper spray next year, though. Bertha wants her goddamn Slim Jims.
Scrambling to find last minute Christmas presents? E-mail Elliot at ejmorris2@wisc.edu and join him at Wal-Mart to get some nice toe socks. And be sure to bring your pepper spray.
