Merry grin chmis

By Alana Valdez

It’s that time of year again. A season of joy, laughter, giving, and winter fun but it’s not all it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. People can get so wrapped up in the winter holiday season they don’t stop to consider that with this season comes, greed, holiday grievances, accidents, crime rate, finals, and to top it all off terrible weather.

The first thing people think about when it comes to winter is the holidays like Christmas and New Years. Holidays are great and all, but people are way too obsessed with them. People seem to think that the holidays are all about getting and receiving gifts, decorating, and caroling. A lot of it has to do with commercial franchises over glorifying these activities and making us think we need to spend more money to get the best gifts. They enforce the idea that if you do not get people expensive gifts they think they are not important enough to you. So people search high and low and do whatever it takes for the best and most expensive gifts, which includes fighting an old lady for a pair of diamond earrings because they are the last pair, they are on sale, and your girlfriend just has to have those specific pair of earrings but that is just an example. People are just so greedy this time of year. There are people out in the world who have no home, no food, and no warm clothes and many are worried about getting an expensive pair of earring when their money would be best spent elsewhere.

Lets not forget those annoying quirks that come with the holidays. Those Christmas songs are the same songs every year and once you are heard them in every store, on every radio station and everywhere you go, it gets pretty old really quick. Not to mention everywhere you look people are already selling Christmas stuff and even before Thanksgiving has arrived. It is like the marketing franchises are trying to shove Christmas down our throats. Then the tragedy of incoming generations is losing our older and wiser generations and the traditions and true meaning of the holidays die with them. That leaves our upcoming generations with no costumes passed down to them so the true meaning of the holidays gets lost.

The thing with this time of year too is the crime rate. “Christmas seems to bring out the worst in everybody, even criminals.  Burglary, home invasions, murders, and suicides increase around Christmas.  Drug overdoses also see an minor uptick.” says author Hadena James. “Crime rates may change in winter because it gets darker earlier and people are more likely to commit crimes at night as opposed to during daylight hours.” according to Atlantic Crime Stoppers.

Winter is of course cold, rainy, windy, and that can also bring huge storms. This weather causes accidents on the road. People don’t always drive the speed limit when it rains and since the roads are wet and slippery so if drivers are not careful they can crash into other cars. With the rain and wet roads drivers have to drive slower which means more traffic so it take longer to arrive to places.. It’s just a hassle and it can get really annoying.

There are plenty of reason not to be so jolly this time of year. The greed takes over, the holiday spirit is over promoted, widespread crime, and weather the is terrible.