by Patti Beckert

Created on: November 12, 2009

Actually, all you have to do to be a Scrooge at Christmas or any other time of the year is to be disagreeable, mean, greedy, and uncooperative. When you have made up your mind that you are not going to partake in any of the holiday festivities coming your way and instead want to go around muttering bah humbug to everyone who wishes you a joyful season, then you are going to suffer the consequences. The more you make your distaste of Christmas known, the less cheer will come your way and eventually, you'll have self-fulfilled that nasty little prophecy of yours that Christmas is overrated.

But, just in case you honestly need some lessons in being a Scrooge this Christmas, then here are a few things you can do that will guarantee your place as the #1 Scrooge of all time:

1. Wait until a couple of days before Christmas when the shoppers are frantic to get their last-minute shopping done, fire up the old Chevy truck and head on down to the local Walmart and buy all your staples for a month. Go into the clearance aisle and pick up a few "unmarked" items, and then sashay on up to the "cigarette checkout line." Nothing says Scrooge like making smokers wait in line for you to buy 400 rolls of toilet paper, 18 bottles of prune juice, and two carts full of Banquet chicken pot pies, and on top of that, waiting another half hour to find the price on that little hot dog chew toy for the dog you don't even own. Oh, and on top of that, finding out you aren't even a smoker.

2. Blame your bad situation on your parents. Everyone else is doing it. Sure when the money was pouring in and you were spending it as soon as you got it instead of putting it away for the leaner times, you can just blame your parents for not driving home the importance of saving for a rainy day. Never mind that you had plenty of money to go out with your friends every weekend and party like there's was no tomorrow. Now you are paying the price. No wait, your parents are paying the price because they aren't getting anything from Scrooge this Christmas.

3. Use the Christmas season to get rid of all the useless stuff you have around the house, like the Ronco automatic potato peeler you got from Aunt Alice three Christmases ago, or the dozen or so auto-watering glass bulbs that you have gotten the past few Christmases from folks who never took the time to figure out that you live in a tiny little apartment with no patio and no place to grow plants. Come to think of it, that may have something to do with your

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