I am not a Scrooge. Well, at least I am not yet a Scrooge. I do not have a man named Bob or anyone else working for me in a cold office where I force them to work on Christmas day. I do give to charity when I can. I do believe that those with the cash should give back as much as they can to help the poor. I am not chasing away people who come to my door when the ask for money (my dog takes care of that withing me having to even get up from the couch).

That being said, I have to admit I am becoming a bit of a grouch when it comes to the holidays and the phenomenon seems to be growing the older I get. I guess I was pretty much like you when I was a kid. The entire year hinged around two glorious gift-infested events. There was your birthday which, in my case, was in June. Then there was Christmas. It was balanced nicely for me and I always kind of felt sorry for those who had birthdays in December or right around Christmas as this meant their birthday and Christmas probably got lumped together into one thing.

I would pour through the Sears catalog as a kid and look eagerly at the new toys that were due out in Christmas. I loved the various playsets that they had. I had a Death Star playset as a kid that rocked more than you can imagine. It even had a working trash compactor and that is still about the coolest thing ever. I would eagerly anticipate the days, counting them down in my head, until the big day would arrive. When I was really young I imagined that the noises I heard in my attic were actually that of Santa, even though we had two chimneys and two fireplaces so why he would have gone into the attic unless it was to burglarize I didn't know. Such logic is misplaced as a child.

Up until that day we had other things to keeps us occupied. There was the visit to Santa, for example. There was the shopping for mom and dad. There was the tree and then playing with the train set that went around the bottom of the tree. There was playing in the snow and finishing up the first half of the school year too.

All of that was great and I have very nice and warm memories. However, as an adult a lot of the magic has worn off. This is especially true of both Halloween and Christmas for me. See, to me life should be about working hard at your job and then at your family (if you have one, which I do not) and then trying to relax as much as possible. It seems to me far too many people now spend their leisure time decorating their houses for both of those holidays and I just think that's way too much work for very little reward.

It all starts with Halloween. Surely at your company you know the guy or gal who spend what must be countless hours in their basements constructing these elaborate and detailed costumes. Then what do they do? They show up at work and have to sit in them all day while also trying to run reports and yelling and other people or subordinates. I mean, can you take your manager seriously if he is dressed as a clown or, perhaps, one of the wizards from “Lord of the Rings?” I know I never could.

It all seems like a lot of work for a very short amount of time. Even if you were the costume all day long that is maybe twelve hours. If you throw in a Halloween party, you can up that to almost twenty hours. Now, how many hours did it take to construct that very realistic-looking wizard staff there Gandalf? See what I mean? A lot of work for a short amount of time.

It's the same principle for me when it comes to Christmas. People must spend days, maybe weeks, setting up entire villages on their front lawn or creating the most elaborate village around their tree. Some people's trees look so loaded with decorations you wonder how the entire thing doesn't collapse under its own weight. Why? For what?

At least with the decorations you can set those up a month or so in advance and enjoy them a bit longer than the costume you made. But still, once the holiday is over with you now have th spend almost as many hours as it took to put all of that up taking them back down.

I think for me the real thing is that I am single and I live alone. Who am I trying to impress by spending hours decorating my apartment? My dog? She tends to not be very impressed by Christmas trees or decorations. I don't have holiday parties. If I want to be inspired by decorations I can walk around my neighborhood, go over to a friend or relative's place or go downtown.

I don't want the holidays to go away. I am all for the holidays, I just wish people would calm down a bit. You already have jobs that occupy your time and why are you turning all of that quality down-time into more work? I guess you get some kind of reward out of it and you can know that I am leeching off of it myself by sucking up some of your holiday joy and not putting out any of my own.

I don't want three spirits to show up at my place and try to convince me to string Christmas light around the ceiling in my living room. I just don't see the point, is all. If I had a family with kids and a wife I can see how decorating means something. For me, it seems like a lot of work for little reward.

These days everyone has to have some kind of inflatable thing in their front yard for every holiday. I even know people who have inflatable things in their yard when it's not a holiday. Do you really need the inflatable Chicago Bears football players in your yard all of football season? Who started this fad? Is there just one company that produces every inflatable snowman, Christmas tree, turkey and penguin? They must be raking in a fortune. Why didn't I think of that?

Halloween has grown steadily worse over the years as well. People create some of the most disturbing things in their yards now and then try to pass it off as good clean fun rather than a probable indication of serious psychiatric problems. If you have Michael Meyers on your lawn holding the rope of a guillotine that apparently has just chopped the head off of some dude and then have the bloody head on the lawn... Well, you just might need to get yourself a little help or maybe a new job or something.

Bryan Alaspa is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .