Bah-Humbug, and other Observations about the Holidays

With the exception of New Years, and Halloween -- I tend to be somewhat cynical about the holiday seasons. Now my detractors might argue that my lack of holiday cheer is merely a byproduct of the fact that at all hours -- be it Christmas freakin' day -- I have work to do -- and every second that I'm not working I'm digging myself a little bit deeper into a hole. However, my detractor's numbers are small -- and they are stupid.

I freely admit I wish I didn't have to work. However, relatively speaking, my bitterness about that particular aspect of the holidays is mere burp -- somewhat rude and unseemly. In contrast, any honest, reality-based reflection on the holidays will unleash a titanic hurricane of fowl odors; fierce winds, conjured from within the dark colon of American capitolism -- that morbidly obese drunk who eats nothing but cabbage and sausage. The stink is unbearable.

You may mock me by tooting a bah-humbug (in rather bad British accent, I might add...), however, the facts, and simple logic are on my side. First of all, I think the rules are quite simple. The more times you are reminded that you have to "get ready" ("getting ready" undoubtably means shopping for crap) for a holiday by commercial radio and television, the greater the chances are that a holiday is a scam[1]. Furthermore, the closer a holiday is intertwined with nationalism and religion, the more sinister is the holiday.

Is it not sides-hurting hilarious that Bill O'Reilly -- now there is a Christian! -- is leading a counter-attack against "the war on Christmas"?! I wonder how Jesus would have reacted to Bill O'Reilly's teachings, philosophy, and worldview? Probably with compassion, understanding, and love... Of course, I've never worshiped the Jesus of Emperor Constantine, so I might be out of touch with mainstream.

And it's that which bugs me so much about the holidays. Sometime -- in random spurts of paranoia -- I wonder about the function of having a society celebrate occassions in mass. In Christmas, and Thanksgiving's case -- any educated person knows that there is no real substance to holidays. The day of Christmas was originally a Roman fertility festival, and we waged a genocide against the indians. And that kind of puts a damper on my ability to "feel good" about that feast the pilgrims had...

Sometimes, when I'm alone at night, I wonder what would happen to Christmas if we didn't have radio, television, and print media repeating ad-naseum the "GET READY FOR THE FREAKIN' HOLIDAYS AND BUY BUY BUY" messages. IT seems to me that people are freaking insane. Add to that our massive, communal sources of information being monopolized by those who wish to take advantage of our pocketbooks, and it seems we have trouble with a capitol T.

This Christmas insanity, it would seem, is merely a symptom of the larger sickness: a society which bases its reality off of a fake world created by people who want nothing more, than for us to buy more orange clean. In their defense, they will throw in an extra bottle, free of charge -- but you must order now.