By Jeremiah Magan

Daily Titan Opinion Editor

I hate the artificiality of the holidays. I hate having to force a smile every time someone gives me a generic “Happy Holidays” greeting because they don’t want to offend me. I hate having to throw on my best shit-eating grin.

I especially hate the music. From the day after Thanksgiving until New Year, our ears are bombarded with songs about mothers committing adultery with obese men and grandmothers being trampled by large, horned mammals.

You can’t escape it. Every department store and office building insists on driving its occupants insane with the unceasing jingles and chimes of the inexplicably beloved holiday tunes.

There are only so many Christmas songs a person can hear covered by R&B artists before they lose control and open fire in a Target parking lot, making the holidays just a little worse for everyone.

Charitable acts are a big part of the whole “good will toward men” aspect of the holidays. Various organizations and groups of high school students go door to door and collect cans of creamed corn and chipped beef that have been sitting in the back of people’s cupboards for the past three years. It’s all very heart warming.

I don’t know if this is public knowledge, but people are poor all year round. Thousands of families don’t just lose all their money in the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Giving because you feel guilty about how well off you are is a nice thought, but it is a thought that should be had a little more often, not just after a bunch of greasy faced teens squeak out an explanation about why they’re knocking on your door at 9:30 at night.

People get too involved with everyone else’s lives during the holidays. They push their holiday cheer onto everyone around them and get upset if it is not well received. If a person wants to be miserable during any time of the year, we should let them. Who are we to tell anyone that they are not happy enough for the season?

The old notion that the holiday season causes suicides to skyrocket is a myth. According to a Los Angeles Times article from 2007, suicides actually decline by close to 40 percent during the holiday season.

LA Times attributes this myth to the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where Jimmy Stewart’s character should have jumped in the freezing river, as a possible reason for this misconception.

I know hearing George Bailey say “I wanna live again,” 30 times every December makes me want to jump in a river. “A Christmas Story” makes me want to find a child playing with a BB gun and smash it over his head, just so I can save him from his parents constantly telling him “you’ll shoot your eye out.”

It may seem like I hate everything about the holidays, but that is simply untrue. The one thing I truly enjoy is gathering with friends and family, sharing stories and a few bottles of whiskey and patching up the inevitable alcohol-induced fights.

It wouldn’t be the holidays without a trip to the emergency room or the holding cell at our local police station.