[Nazareth, December 24. Image via Getty.]

A dog wearing a Santa Claus outfit attends a parade outside the Church of the Annunciation, built on the site where Christians believe Mary was told by the angel Gabriel that she would give birth to Jesus Christ, in the northern Arab Israeli city Nazareth on December 24, 2009. AFP PHOTO/JACK GUEZ (Photo credit should read JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

[Vallejo, California; December 23. Image via Getty.]

VALLEJO, CA - DECEMBER 23: A newborn male giraffe calf sits in his enclosure at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom December 23, 2009 in Vallejo, California. The newest addition to the reticulated giraffe herd at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was born on December 14th weighing 145 pounds and standing nearly 5' 10'. The park plans to hold a contest to determine the name of the baby giraffe. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

[Los Angeles, December 23. Image via WENN.]

[Munich, December 23. Image via Getty.]

MUNICH, GERMANY - DECEMBER 23: Two Midas Cichlid (lat: amphilophus citrinellus) fish are seen in an aquarium at Hellabrunn zoo on December 23, 2009 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

[Los Angeles, December 23. Image via Splash.]

1. Gift buying.
You know what I like? I like seeing something at a random time of the year that reminds me of a person I love and then getting it for them, and saying, I thought you would like this. I do not like the frenzy, deadline and expectations put on Christmas gifts. Your mind gets in a weird place, when you're shopping, and you start thinking anything, ANYTHING would be a great gift. Who doesn't want a new keychain, right? If you're broke, it feels even more horrible. The worst part — and this happened to me last night — is when you get a gift from someone when you didn't get them anything. They say it's better to give than receive, but sometimes receiving comes with heap of guilt.

And don't get me started on Santa, the old white man who wants me to sit on his lap before he'll bring me what I want. It's just twisted.

2. The tree.
Growing up, we always had pretty great trees. Then my sister saw FernGully. How could we cut down her "friend" in the prime of his life? Sap is basically blood and CAN'T YOU SEE HE IS BLEEDING? CAN'T YOU FEEL THE PAIN? She was half-joking but it kind of took the magic out of it. I love the smell of evergreens… but. The ornaments are always broken and lights are a pain in the ass and my mom has this thing about not having old business in the house for the new year so we'd have to throw the tree out on New Year's eve and get pricked with pine needles and seeing the carcasses lining the streets of New York in the weeks after Christmas is basically like a never-ending commercial for seratonin drugs. Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone. See also: Wreaths.

3. Traveling/Not traveling.
If you go away around Christmas, you're guaranteed a travel nightmare. Traffic, long lines at the airport, delays, etc. And it sucks when people go away… Unless I am also going away. Otherwise, fuck you and your beachy Facebook pictures. No, but seriously: I'm from New York, so I am often here on Xmas. And I hate when all my homies go out of town. :(

4. Religious and racial tension.
I am black. But. Please don't wish me Happy Kwanzaa. I never even heard of Kwanzaa til someone told me about it when I was a freshman in college. I mean it was invented in the '60s and whatnot so I thought it was for blippies and the white people who love them. Anyway 11 months of the year I'm an atheist into astrology, who likes religion in terms of Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, but only goes to church if someone has died or is getting married, and even then, feels awkward. Then Thanksgiving hits and I'm supposed to be all Merry Christmas Happy Hannukah it's so awesome that the baby Jesus was born like thousands of years ago, here is an iTunes gift card!

5. Egg nog
Disgusting.

6. Fruitcake
See previous item.

7. Closed businesses and empty streets.
New York is the town where you're supposed to be able to eat caviar, rockclimb or pop out for a pint of beer — or ice cream — 24 hours a day. But on Christmas, the bodega has its gate down and you're standing in the street like what am I supposed to use for toilet paper now? Do people deserve a day off? Yes. But after the long lines and frenzy of pre-Christmas shopping, the sudden stoppage — followed by the post-Christmas sale insanity — is kind of sad.

8. CAROLS. For the love of God I heard you the first time in Duane Reade when I was trying to buy tampons. You "need" a little Christmas. Okay. Well get on that. I don't want to hear it in the grocery store, in the cab, in the manicure place, at the Chinese takeout place, in commercials, and as my super's ringtone. I do really like Nat King Cole, though. Sigh. But when Janice Dickinson and Bob Dylan are doing Christmas songs, isn't the genre over?

9. Tacky Holiday "Fashion"
This includes holiday sweaters and the naughty Santa, bow-on-your-cooch crap Frederick's shills.

10. Lists.
Year-end lists, Christmas lists, complaint lists. Like this one.

[Beverly Hills, December 23. Image via Splash.]

[St. Barthelemy, December 23. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

[Al-Ahmadi, December 23. Image via Getty.]

Kuwaiti young girls perform during a celebration marking Kuwait Oil Company's (KOC) 75th anniversary in the city of Al-Ahmadi, about 40 kms south of Kuwait City, late December 23, 2009. AFP PHOTO/YASSER AL-ZAYYAT (Photo credit should read YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images)

• Uh-oh. Mary J. Blige punched her husband in the face at her record release party. Dude was reportedly bleeding. She was heard screaming:

"You're not going to ruin my night!" And "What are you gonna do, Chris Brown me?" What happened to no more drama!?!?!? [Page Six]

• According to this report, Mary J. Blige "smacked" her husband for checking out a waitress. [NY Daily News]
• Have you noticed that Mary J. Blige and Rihanna have the same haircut? [TMZ]
• Miley Cyrus's new boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, was once in a brawl after an event in Hollywood, so this piece claims he has a "history of violence." [TMZ]
• Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins actually broke up over the summer; they're just dropping the bomb on us now. For Christmas! Sniffle. [Page Six]
• Brittany Murphy's family has hired a security team for the funeral today. [TMZ]
• Vanessa Hudgens is suing the owners of a website which posted and refused to take down nude pictures of her. [TMZ]
• Managers for the kids from Jersey Shore have been trying to get clubs to pay $10,00 for appearance fees, but NYC hot spots are all, thanks but no thanks. [Page Six]
• New Jersey lawmakers want MTV to cancel Jersey Shore. [AP]
• Kristin Cavallari partied with the cast of Jersey Shore and the pictures speak for themselves. [ONTD]
• Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher bought their Christmas presents at a vintage store. [People]
• BREAKING: Renee Zellweger went for Starbucks. [3AM]
• Fox will order more seasons of American Idol with or without Simon Cowell. It's hard to imagine it without, yet surely the show would chug along… The voices are the true stars. [Reuters]
• BTW: American Idol will return to the top 24 format; the top 36 was "too unwieldy." [NY Post]
• Susan Boyle says: "It's been an absolutely brilliant year and I can't thank everyone enough for the support I've been given, not only here but around the world. I am the happiest I have ever been and truly enjoying myself." [Mirror]
• Sometimes people do not want to be linked to Tila Tequila, and the gossip columns should respect that! [Page Six]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Even though Tila Tequila tweeted that she was pregnant, what she meant was she's about to get pregnant. She is ready to be a surrogate. [NY Daily News]
• Glee won four Satellite Awards, which could mean it's got a good chance at the Golden Globes. [NY Post]
• Rob McElhenny, aka Mac on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, has bought a bar in Philadephia's Old City neighborhood. [ONTD]
• Uh, Tom Waits is in The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus? Didn't realize that. He says he's not an actor, but, "I do some acting." And: "Nobody wants you to be good at two things… They'd rather get a specialist, a guy who just works on eyes or scalp or ankles. Nobody wants a general practitioner. But the arts are such that there's a place where they overlap." Check out his character's pencil thin mustache at the link. [LA Times]
• Avatar is doing okay here in the US, but it's doing much better outside of the country — with a total $285 million at the box office worldwide. Since the movie has a $300 million price tag, it's almost about to break even. [Forbes]
• Seam Penn is dating hot young things. [Page Six]
• Rhoda's Valerie Harper is returning to TV to play Brad Garrett's mom on an episode of Til Death. [Page Six]
• "The secret comic-book origin of Sherlock Holmes." [Reuters]
• "As a little dainty, beautiful baby I just worshipped her, but now she's at an age where we fight, where sometimes she hates me, sometimes I get really mad at her. It's like, 'Oh you must be a bad mother,' No, I'm not a bad mother. I'm a very good mother" — Courtney Love on Frances Bean Cobain. [Page Six via Spinner.com]
• "We ate a lot of chicken, you know, because chicken's cheap, we had so much chicken — chicken backs, chicken everything... to this day, I can only eat small pieces or else I feel funny." — Eating chicken reminds Jay-Z of when he was poor. [Mirror via O Magazine]
• "I'm a firm believer that you can't will anything sooner than it's destined to happen no matter how much you want it. That's the way I live my life, and it's the way I'm able to keep my sanity in this industry."— Law & Order's Anthony Anderson, who used to work the phones for Ticketmaster. [WSJ]
• "I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don't see anything different. On the domestic side, look here: What's so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street? He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black-and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman. But what choices do they have within the structure?" — Danny Glover is disappointed with Barack Obama. [The Life Files via News One]
• "They're just the most brilliant in the world. My fans are fucking really smart — they're art students, they're club kids, and some of them are just normal Top 40-listening kids in high school who don't feel like they have an identity yet and they're searching for one. My dad was at a show the other night and afterwards he said, 'Do you think your fans are smart?' and I said, 'Oh hell yeah, my fans are smart,' and he said, 'You know what, I was thinking the same thing during the show.' Every song I did, they remade on their own, and every photograph that I took, they took their own version of it. They remade my music videos, they designed clothes for me. They wrote poetry and made films and designed all sort of amazing paintings." — Lady Gaga is a fan of her fans. [Mirror via MTV News]

[New York, December 23. Image via Splash.]

[Lincoln, Nebraska; December 23. Image via AP.]

A tree is coated with ice as vehicles travel a slick Interstate 80 in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009. A major winter storm is promising to bring a white Christmas to much of the nation's midsection, though countless holiday travelers faced slick roads and scattered flight delays and cancellations Wednesday that only looked to get worse.(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

[Santa Monica, December 21. Image via Flynet.]

[Tokyo, December 23. Image via AP.]

"Cocolo," a 2.5-year-old female Toy Poodle, eats a special Christmas cake made from rice powder, yogurt and natural honey with strawberries atop it, in Tokyo Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009. The Christmas cake for dog is sold at 2,500 yen (US$27) at the Prince Park Tower Tokyo until Dec. 25. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

[Los Angeles, December 22. Image via Splash.]

[San Candido, Italy; December 22. Image via Getty.]

INNICHEN/SAN CANDIDO, ITALY - DECEMBER 22: (FRANCE OUT) Anna Holmlund of Sweden takes 1st place during the FIS Freestyle World Cup Women's Ski Cross on December 22, 2009 in Innichen/San Candido, Italy. (Photo by Alexis Boichard/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)