Christmas is the New York-based sports team (in any league) of holidays. It may not be the occasion you celebrate, or even have any interest in, but for better or worse, it utterly dominates the holiday landscape. Its omnipresence is so overwhelmingly omnipresent that everyone tends to lose focus on everything else, making it difficult to get other things done this time of year. Parties and shopping and travel plans throw everyone off-balance. As such, it can even distract us from what we’d rather be distracted by: hockey.
If only we could completely ignore these outside influences like cookies and gift wrap and ugly sweaters so we could concentrate better on the thing that helps us ignore outside influences like work and politics and bills!