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It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the most wonderful time of the week: it’s time for a new edition of The Gripe Report.

I hope you’re ready to go for Christmas next week with all of your decorations up. I know I am. In fact, my fiance had all of our Christmas decorations up when I got home from a weekend trip to Pennsylvania.

That was on November 3, so we’ve been ready for Christmas for quite some time.

Got a gripe? Send it in!: mattreigleoutkick@gmail.com

However, even while it’s supposed to be a happy time, there’s still plenty to gripe about, so I figured this was as good a time as any to run full of a few Christmas/Holiday season gripes.

Nothing says “Christmas” like hurting someone’s feelings with a white elephant gift exchange. (Getty Images)

White Elephant Gift Exchange

Let’s get things started with a staple of family get-togethers and office shindigs, the white elephant gift exchange (which is also a good name for a stoner jam band). 

Our own Dan Zaksheske brought this one up, and our own Amber Harding had a great anecdote to illustrate what is wrong with this gift-giving format: 

My family is HUGE. So at some point maybe five or six years ago, someone decided we’d be doing a yearly White Elephant gift exchange instead of individual gifts, with a $25 max. There’s probably a 50/50 split on family members who take it seriously and actually try to buy a nice $25 gift and family members who just wrap up something completely random that they found on the way to the party. One year my 22-year-old nephew brought a traffic cone, for example. And because this White Elephant tradition has become so pointless, people have started skirting the rules and buying individual gifts for each other anyway and exchanging them in secret. Last year I caught my mom passing off a gift to my brother in the hallway like it was a drug deal.

Although to be fair, maybe it was. I didn’t wait for him to unwrap it.

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I loathe the white elephant gift exchange.

First of all, I always feel bad for the person who brings the gift that no one wants. The gift that no matter who has it, they want to dump that thing ASAP on the next poor sap, who will in turn trade it for a better gift.

Sorry you slaved over that crocheted tissue box cover, Edna, but everyone is going to avoid that thing like the plague.  

This does one of two things, it either A) adds stress to the whole endeavor because no one wants their gift to be the dud, or B), people phone it in like Amber alluded to (although, a traffic cone sounds pretty sweet. Do you know how many uses there are for traffic cones? You can use it to block things or perhaps run around it… I guess that’s it).

Just draw names, give them the gift, and let’s call it a day.

Christmas gift-giving doesn’t need back-room nonsense or backstabbing thrown into the mix. 

And if you don’t know what to get, just pick up an Amazon gift card on your way to the party and everyone’s happy.

I hope this guy has a good vacuum cleaner because most of those needles will be all over the floor within a week. (Getty images)

Real Christmas Trees

I feel like I’m going to lose some folks with this one, but I’m what you call “brave,” so we’re going to talk about it anyway: I’m not a fan of real Christmas trees.

I know some people will want me drawn and quartered and then shot into the sun for saying that, but hear me out. 

First of all, getting the tree home in the first place is an ordeal. You have to strap it to the roof of your luxurious 2022 Kia Forte and drive it home, and it leaves you with sap all over your car’s paint job.

How some enterprising tech whiz hasn’t come up with an app that is like Uber for Christmas trees is beyond me.

Then, when the tree is in your house, you have needles dropping constantly 

If you walk by it, needles fall off.

If you close a door anywhere in the house, needles fall off.

If the cat farts, needles fall off. 

And then, after all of that, you have to figure out a way to throw away an entire tree. This isn’t just some stupid plant you can throw in the trash can and be done with; it’s an entire tree.

I get for a lot of people this is tradition, but trust me, get a taste of a fake tree and you’ll be converted instantly, and you’ll regret the years you spent with your real-deal Christmas trees.

You can it up in minutes, there’s no mess, and when you’re done celebrating, all you have to do is put it back in its big, plastic hockey bag and cram it in the corner of the garage/basement/closet until next year.

Guess how much I miss going to some parking lot and picking out a tree… go ahead ask me.

…

I don’t! 

Maybe I’m just jealous of people who are good at it, but I hate wrapping presents. (getty Images)

Wrapping Presents

This morning my fiance informed me that she was going to be away for a couple of hours for a hair appointment.

That meant that I had a bit of time to grab the presents I bought for her from my secret stash in the guest bedroom/my office closet and get to wrapping.

I was dreading this because I absolutely hate wrapping presents.

Nothing to me feels more like a fat-fingered, minimal manual dexterity-having ass quite like wrapping presents.

I don’t know what my problem is. It’s not like I’m trying to fold origami cranes, I’m trying to wrap a t-shirt in Target-bought wrapping paper.

And yet if you throw a chimpanzee a box, a sheet of wrapping paper, and tape and then compared the finished result to my completed wrapping job, you’d have a hard time telling the difference.

I’ve watched videos in years past to try and get the basics down, but this year I went rogue and the results were pretty much the same.

I guess I just don’t have the present-wrapping gene…

“Happy New Year!!!!!! …Now what?” (Getty Images)

New Year’s Eve (The Holiday Not The Gary Marshall Movie… Okay, That Too)

Christmas is great, but its holiday sibling, New Year’s Eve? I’m not a fan.

Now, I love New Year’s Day. That’s a football holiday, and most years it’s a hockey holiday too (although the Winter Classic is on December 31 this year, so New Year’s Eve is trying to win me back),

But New Year’s Eve is, in my humble and irrefutably correct opinion, the most overrated holiday that we have on the books. 

I get that we like to take a victory lap on the year that is ending and get fired up for the next one, but I think the build-up to midnight is not congruent with the payoff that comes at midnight.

You spend hours getting excited, counting down, then the clock strikes 12, the ball drops, you yell “Happy New Year!”, fire off a party-popper, smooch your chick… then what?

Once 12:01 hits, you’re just standing there wishing you were in bed wearing stupid glasses (by the way, we are way beyond the years that make suitable glasses. I get how 2002 or even 2020 becomes glasses, but 2025? C’mon, that’s ridiculous).

There’s a crescendo of energy in the run-up to midnight, but it ends with a whimper.

I will say that my favorite part of New Year’s Eve is talking about how there’s no chance in hell anyone could ever get me to stand in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. 

I would say, save the energy you typically waste on New Year’s Eve for New Year’s Day. You’re welcome.

…

Well, that’s it for this very special holiday edition of The Gripe Report! 

I hope you have a happy and safe holiday whether you’re trimming a Christmas tree, lighting a menorah, or erecting a Festivus pole (as the Gripe Report’s Commander in Chief, I’m a big fan of the Airing of Grievances).

We’ll reconvene for the next Gripe Report, and in the meantime, send in those Gripes!: mattreigleoutkick@gmail.com