12 Days of Fuck This: 8 Reasons Christmas Markets Must End

People tend to romanticize their meager lives during Christmas. They decorate the inescapable sadness of the world with tinsel and fake trees and force themselves into seasonal activities that Hollywood tries to convince us are magical, but in fact, are hell: Ice skating, staring at lights, singing carols, shopping for someone other than ourselves, and finally, perusing the utter abomination that is the local Christmas market.

I’m sure they’re better in Europe (almost everything is), but here? Well, between the crowds and all the overpriced crap, Christmas markets are a metaphor for this godforsaken country. Unfortunately, in a city like New York, one is spoiled for choice. There’s the Bryant Park market with innumerable stalls of culinary catastrophes like the lobster cone and the over-boiled gnocchi; the Union Square market where your nostrils will no doubt be inundated with the waft of incense and Swiss cheese; and the Columbus Circle market, which is conveniently located right outside of a mall. Then, there’s Rockefeller Center, where you’re invited to test the limits of claustrophobia surrounded by screaming children and tourists taking approximately 12,000 pictures of a tree that is, to put it simply, an oversized version of the one in their living room. Having fun yet?

Anyway. You know what’s coming. Here’s a list of what I most hate.

8. The Crowds: It doesn’t matter what day or time it is, for the entire month of December, New York’s Christmas markets teem with tourists and the unemployed. I don’t hate either (especially the latter), but being shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of them for any period of time would summon anyone’s inner Grinch.