I just feel better when it's not around

It’s midnight and I’m sitting up with a glass of wine and my favorite holiday movie — “Barfly.”

OK. “Barfly” has nothing to do with the holidays, really, but lately I’ve been relating everything Christmas-y with a Mickey Rourke/Henry Chinaski/Charles Bukowski sensibility: I don’t hate Christmas, I just feel better when it’s not around.

How is it possible to love everything about the holidays except the holidays?

I love the music and the sentiment, the hustle and bustle; I even enjoy buying presents for family and friends to find under the tree.

It’s just that, for me, the perception of Christmas and the reality of it are two divergent things.

The joy that Christmas promises, in my estimation, requires the distance of a season or two for full appreciation to take place. Summer, for example, would be a perfect time to have Christmas.

When it’s uncomfortably hot and I am willing the skies to explode into fat snowflakes is when I pine for Christmas. Not when I am frozen to the core and trying to scrape the ice off my windshield with a credit card in the mall parking lot.

If you were to ask me in August what any thoughts of Christmas bring, I would envision myself toasty-warm in a big fluffy robe, sitting by the tree with a mug of coffee and nothing to do but look at the lights and relax in the moment.

Come December 24, however, and I have a new picture in mind that usually has me in a frenzy, surrounded by a tangle of tangibles, trying to wrap Christmas gifts that at the time of purchase I thought were brilliant but I now fear will fizzle. The last straw usually comes around midnight when I’ve lost the end of the “Magic Tape” for the 17th time and I am seriously considering using a glue stick.

THAT’S IT! I AM CANCELING CHRISTMAS!

But how?

Two years ago I was successful in abandoning Christmas by having a baby a week prior.

Christmas came anyway, but it was trumped by something infinitely more important.

We missed every Christmas party thrown, every cookie exchange and even the family gift fest that year. Christmas came to us. Our stash of pre-made cookies went to the hospital staff, and our presents to each other were small tokens.

It was a wonderful Christmas, but one that won’t likely be duplicated with any precision.

I still have my picture of that comfortable Christmas morning by the fire in my own house with nowhere to go and nothing to do as I book the 1,243-mile flight to Minnesota, where, with a toddler in tow, we will spend the holidays this year.

I suppose there’s just no way around it. No matter how much I plan, I know on Christmas Eve I will be furiously wrapping presents left naked for the baggage screeners to peruse and wishing the tape really was MAGIC.