October 31: People are dressed as witches, ghouls, werewolves, pirates, doctors, superheros, construction workers, Disney princesses, sexy doctors, sexy mice, sexy cats, sexy dogs, sexy sailors, Dwight from The Office, hippies, Bugs and Lola from Space Jam; everyone is dancing in candy and bobbing for apples (do people actually do that?) and summoning the devil and watching Hocus Pocus and frolicking through the leaf-covered sidewalks in a delight of fright.

November 1: Everyone has shed their costumes and immediately demands peppermint-flavored beverages, blaring Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” and breaking out the scratchy Christmas sweaters and plopping fat plastic Santas on their lawn and wrapping presents and putting up Christmas lights and decking the halls and fa-la-la-la-ing and shouting “Merry Christmas!” and getting offended by red cups and counting down the days until Christmas.

Oh, does that seem like an exaggeration to you? Because it’s not.

November is objectively the best month of the year. Autumn is in your face– outside is a collage of warm-hued foliage, sweaters and scarves are appropriate (but not totally necessary, because snow doesn’t really impede too much, but cuddly clothes are “in”), Thanksgiving occurs (all this means to me is that I get to eat the best meal of the year), Black Friday (because a holiday for shopping is clearly right up my alley) and, of course, my birthday, which is an internationally-recognized holiday (message me privately to know where to send the gifts).

To me, November is a month of autumn and food and brown sweaters. But apparently to everyone else in the United States, November is Pre-Christmas Month.

You really find out who your true friends are around Christmas– not because your true friends buy you gifts or invite you to come home with them or anything, but because you find out who’s absolutely obsessed with Christmas and who’s generally upset that Christmas is a thing. Example:

Friend 1: “It’s November 1!”
Friend 2: “They already started playing Christmas music on the radio.”
Friend 3: “I know! I’m so excited!”
Friend 2: “Ugh.”
Friend 1: “Wait, you don’t like Christmas music?”
Friend 2: “I hate Christmas.”
Friend 3: “I love Christmas music!”

Thus, Friend 2 can no longer be friends with Friend 1 and 3 for the next two months because Christmas.

I’m Friend 2.

I try to hate Christmas in a quiet way, so as to not trod on others’ absolute passion for it. As much of an asshole as I can be, these days I’m trying to be a considerate asshole. I’ve accidentally broken people’s hearts when I’ve said I hate Christmas, so I try not to reveal my disdain so readily anymore.

I don’t even hate Christmas. I’m apathetic about it; I just want to avoid it. Oh, but how? How can I not love a holiday of giving and joy and comradery and merriment and decorations and shopping and food and family? Pretty easily, actually.

I mean, those aren’t the things I dislike though.

Well, I kind of do hate the decorations. I mean, I don’t care if people decorate, I just don’t want to have any part in it. When I used to live at home, my parents would always ask if I wanted to help decorate the house with all the hoards of Christmas knick-knacks they’d accumulated over the years, and I’d always decline. Then, come some time in January when they were finally able to get around to it, they’d tell me to help them clean it all up. “But I didn’t put any of this crap out! Why should I have to help put it all away?” “Help put it away,” was their un-sympathetic order. And that’s ultimately the reason why I moved out of their house and went to college after high school: so I could get out of having any involvement with Christmas decorations.

What I dislike is the hype. Because it’s the hype–it’s the two-month prep period in giddy anticipation for Christmas–that builds up Christmas to be this amazing, over-the-top, dreams-do-come-true day, and then in a measly 24 hours the whole shebang is over and it’s the dead of winter again. Bang, boom, bye. After all that excitement.

Not only that, but it takes place during the winter, and anything having to do with winter just inherently saddens me. It’s hard for me to be happy until things are green again.

So you’d think November would be a nice inhalation before the Christmas insanity of December begins, but instead the “best time of the year” has infiltrated Brittany Month. I’m trying to be a good sport about it, but this Jesus character’s birth is really stealing the spotlight from me this month, and I’m not too keen on it.

Anyway, now you know. Decorate your residence in obnoxious ornamentation. Tell me “Merry Christmas” on my birthday. Deck all the halls. Listen to your crummy Christmas music, the same ol’ same ol’ tunes that have played every year your whole life, singing about hippopotami and front teeth and Santa sliding into your mother’s DM’s. Listen to it all in your home, in your car, in the store, wherever. Have all your fun while I mind my own business with my ear buds in listening to strictly non-Christmas music, as it is November (not that I would listen to Christmas music if it were December).