Bdelygmia (del-ig’-mi-a): Expressing hatred and abhorrence of a person, word, or deed.
I hate Santa Claus. I hate the Easter Bunny. I hate Cupid. I hate the Tooth Fairy. I hate them all from the drunken “Ho, Ho, Ho!” to the tinkling bells and the hands rummaging around under my pillow—waking me up in the middle of the night to leave me a dime—a stinking dime after my father pulled out my tooth with a pair of pliers, because he got sick of waiting for it to fall out on its own. I bled all over my pillow and flushed my dime down the toilet.
Then there’s Santa in his big fake red suit, with a giant white beard made of acrylic. A complete hoax. I had to sit on his lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. I was so nervous I peed all over him. He yelled “Goddamn you, you little shit—what, do I look like a f***ing urinal?” Then he shoved me onto the floor and pushed me away with his foot. He threw a candy cane at me as I crawled toward the door and yelled “Get out of my house dickhead and never come back, or if you do, wear a diaper!”
Then there was the Easter Egg hunt. We held it in the back yard. I couldn’t wait to find a couple of eggs. I loved to peel them and sprinkle on a little salt. It was fun dying them too, but this year for some reason, my father took over the dying. I wasn’t even allowed to watch. I looked for eggs for two hours and couldn’t find any. Our yard was small, so basically, I covered every inch of it. I was confused.
My dad walked up to me with an egg and handed it to me: “Here. You’ve learned your lesson, Chip. I read an article in “Mental Illness” magazine about how dashing our children’s expectations prepares them for the rigors of life and the vale of disappointments it consists of—where happiness is fleeting and depression is the norm.” I was 6 years old and his “lesson” has scared me for life. I mistrust everybody and cry a lot.
Cupid! Spawn on the Devil, lording it over Valentine’s Day—with the wimpy heart candies inscribed with asinine sayings suited for saps and idiots—low-level puns and sappy cliches: “Way 2 Go” sounds like something somebody in a coma would say if they could speak. Then there were the cards—the goddamn cards. The only one I ever got was from my teacher, after I stayed up late making them for my classmates. My teacher took me aside and told me she liked me a lot, and maybe, when I turned 18 we could go to the movies together. That would be in 8 years. I thought she was making fun of me, so I demanded my card back. She picked up a pair of pointed scissors and lunged at me. I jumped out of the way and she stumbled over her wastepaper basket and fell on the scissors. She bled to death while the class watched.
The school psychologist found out what my teacher had said to me, and I was put into counselling. It was group counselling. It was one hour of nutsarama per week. I think the other three kids were psychotic and should’ve been taking medication. Elton thought he was a frog and would answer any question with “Ribit.” He had a piece of cardboard shaped like a lily pad that he sat on. Mary would answer “Who the hell do you think you are?” to anything anybody said. Carl would make a gun with his finger and go “Bang!” every five minutes. I had to spend one month meeting with these people because of goddamn Valentine’s Day and my idiot teacher’s accident. What was the result?
I have a name for my illness: Heortophobia (from the Greek heortḗ, “holiday”): fear of holidays. I’ve set up a blog where I pretend to be a psychologist specializing in heortophobia. I give advice like “Change your religion” or “Eat one rabbit every week” or “Take up archery.” The “Tooth Fairy” is a challenge. Technically, it is instrumental in celebrating tooth loss as a right of passage. but what’s a five- or six-year old kid going to do? Suck it up, but demand a higher per-tooth payout!
My greatest success in maneuvering through the hell of my malady is to celebrate holidays from other cultures. I am looking forward to traveling to Sweden in November to celebrate “Gullight Absukte” {Sweet Face) where everybody wears blond wigs and blue contact lenses, juggles little meatballs, and tells jokes about Danish people.
Last, I don’t why, but Thanksgiving doesn’t scare me. Maybe it’s the tryptophan.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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