I HATE THE ROCKEFELLER CENTER TREE LIGHTING

Tonight, thousands of people will flock to Rockefeller Center to watch some asshole flip a switch that ignites a bunch of Walgeens string lights. Everyone will clap and cheer and maybe cry, and I will be fighting my way home through the crush wishing someone would shout "STAMPEDE" so it would all end a little quicker.

What can I say besides I hate this day so much because it's horrible and stupid. And I think I speak for everyone who works in the vicinity of Rock Center when I say that this is one of the most absurd traditions us fat Americans have cultivated and turned into a Pagan ritual annual holiday event. It's right up there with New Year's Eve in Times Square, when hundreds of thousands of morons stand dick-to-ass and piss into coffee cups and freeze to death just to watch a tinfoil ball slide down a lamppost. If either of these two events are on your bucket list, do yourself a favor, fill that bucket with fire and pour it all over your face and house.

Obviously, there are people who will say that I am a Scrooge for not liking the tree lighting ceremony, but I assure you, these people are idiots. In fact, I LOVE Christmas. I go bat-shit over Christmas. If Christmas were a stray dog I would adopt it and feed it boiled chicken and pumpkin because pumpkin is good for a dog's fur. I love Christmas so much that I want to paint my face like candy cane and wear elf ears and a build snowmen until I die of exhaustion. I love Christmas movies and Christmas songs and Christmas food and even goddamn Christmas caroling. Want to go caroling? I'll go caroling right fucking now. Let's go carol everywhere until someone shoots us in the head with a shotgun for trespassing on their property.

And I don't know why I love this season so much, considering it increases stress levels by roughly 6,000%. Maybe it's because these precious few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day make me forget that humanity is fucked and gives me hope that maybe one day we will all dance around Douglas-firs and give each other gifts and not be greedy fat assholes who try to undercut and back-stab everyone we know 24/7/365.

But the tree lighting? Nope, sorry. There is nothing magical about plopping a giant tree in Midtown so that the city can shutdown every street within a 500 block vicinity so a bunch of Midwesterners (who no doubt have much better-looking trees in their own backyards) can flock to Rock Center to watch a stupid tree get lit up with 9,000,000 tiny bulbs and then take their fat and shitty kids to the Nintendo store. How about taking them to the exercise store? It's called OUTSIDE.

I really don't understand the lore, and I'm being 100% serious. Not one person looks happy to be there - everyone looks genuinely pissed off. Every mom is hitting her kids for wanting more Pepsi and every dad is wishing he had a pint of moonshine to drink and every kid wishes he was at home playing "Call of Duty." Everyone would rather be doing something else and yet, here there are, standing in the cold wearing a Santa hat.

The whole accompanying entertainment really isn't that impressive, either. Neil Patrick Harris is really wearing thin his delegation as America's Gala Hosting Darling, and every celebrity in attendance is covering a classic Christmas song poorly, no doubt driving my mother into fits because GODDAMMIT THEY ARE NOT NAT KING COLE. And then there's Tony Bennet. Jesus Christ, he is old. Trotting him out there is not adorable, it's horrifying.

But just in case you are still on the fence, here is a quick quiz to help you decide whether or not tonight's festivities are for you.

- Do you like smelling the body odor of European men with weird mustaches?
- Do you like being pinned against police barricades by a 400 lb pound woman who's using a baby-stroller as a weapon?
- Do you like having security guards scream in your face to move off the corner because you are blocking traffic, even though you have nowhere else to go because your other option is to be crushed against a police barricade?
- Do you like being goosed by homeless men wearing Santa Claus outfits that look and smell like they've been rolling around the dead fish section of the dump?

If you answer 'yes' to any of these, then the tree lighting is the place for you.

And just in case I've derailed your plans for tonight, here is an alternate set for you and yours to follow for a guaranteed exciting night: go to the liquor store, buy a bottle of whiskey, drink the whiskey, go to a highway overpass, light a garbage can fire, sing doo-wop with bums, drink some toilet wine, get in a fist fight with a guy name Rascal over who was cooler McQueen or Newman, call a cab, go home, go to bed. There, a guaranteed recipe for a better and more memorable night than standing in front of a stupid tree.