The Grinch has nothing on Larry David, who—you're not going to believe this—thinks the holidays are pretty, pretty, pretty terrible.
The 74-year-old actor and writer, whose Curb Your Enthusiasm character hilariously dismisses almost everything and whose previous sitcom Seinfeld famously highlighted the secular tradition of Festivus "for the rest of us," turned his own "airing of the grievances" into an essay for former Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter's digital weekly Air Mail, published on Saturday, Dec. 18.
In the piece, titled, "A Very Larry David Christmas," David wrote that he is "filled with dread at the prospect of close social encounters with what seemed like hundreds of relatives" on Christmas Day.
"I'm a creature of habit and can't tolerate anything that throws me off my normal routine," he said. "That's why I detest all holidays, but none as much as Christmas."
David dissed the holiday music, movies and everything to do with the presents—"thinking about them, shopping for them (never without resentment), and the attendant pile of garbage that accumulates from opening them." He also scoffed at the "barrage" of greetings of "Merry Christmas" and "Happy holidays" that he said "must be returned like unwanted 'I love you's.'"
The TV star and writer, who in the past appeared uncomfortable at large, noisy events, also wrote that "over the years, my Scrooginess at these Christmas Day gatherings became so intolerable that in due course everyone realized how much better the day would be without my off-putting, nay, offensive presence." He said he finally stopped being invited to them.
He reminisced about his first Christmas Day alone, during which he participated in a common Christmas tradition for Jewish Americans.
"I noticed a crowd of people lined up on the street and saw that my local Chinese restaurant was open for business, with every Jew in the neighborhood inside," he said. "I didn't even particularly like the food there, but that night I went to town and ordered all the dishes from my childhood."
He later wrote that since that day, eating Chinese food by himself on Christmas Day has become a "cherished yearly ritual," adding, "And now on Christmas Eve I sleep like a baby, with nary a bathroom break."