Here We Are As In Olden Days, Happy Golden Days of Yore...
Okay, let’s just get something out of the way, shall we? As most of you know, I am not a fan of the holidays. Aside from the forced contact with my family- and dude, what is up with that? Under the Articles of Engagement established by the Geneva Convention, cruel and unusual treatment is prohibited in dealings with prisoners of war, and seeing as my family has been upholding a life-long battle of out passive-aggressiving each other (Shut up, it is TOO a word if I say so) I definitely consider myself a prisoner of said war. But apparently, since we don’t even compare to the weekend population of Lichtenstein - it’s freaking Lichtenstein. You’d go somewhere else on the weekend too- we don’t get official standing with the Geneva Convention, let alone the UN.
So my lack of love for the horrordays doesn’t actually stem from some deep seated emotional trauma, despite popular theory. Mostly, it’s confusion. I find myself spending most of the holidays imitating the RCA dog - head cocked to the side with baffled incomprehension coloring my expression.
Let’s start with the decorations. I just don’t get it. I understand where they come from. It’s the arse end of the year. It’s cold and dark and the weather, especially around these parts, sucks donkey balls. Your skin itches and your nose runs and the damn furnace is always making funny noises. We need to hang up green things to remind us spring will come and bright lights to drive back the darkness and maybe, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Pratchett, to remind the sun to do a proper day’s work.
But a nine foot tall inflated Santa Claus, that seems to always be running at half-mast? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? So a couple strands of lights in a tree, or maybe some battery operated candles in the window - not my type of battery operated device but to each their own, I always say- sure. I can even stomach those white-lighted reindeer and the weird spiral things that are supposed to be Christmas trees but in all honesty, if your lawn is so filled with multicolored objets de bad taste, to the point the local airport is considering contacting the FAA because you’re causing pilots to divert from their flight plans, something is wrong with you. Like, the mall Santa touched you in the no-no wrong. Daddy dressed up as St. Nick and climbed down the chimney to deliver presents and got stuck and DIED wrong.
And people, please- lighted candy canes? In a row or even circling a tree? At best, it looks like they’re holding the tree hostage and worst, like a cemetery for tasteful decorations.
And don’t get me started on the music. Okay, too late. I know that the majority of Christmas music was thought up by some hack on Madison Avenue to sell candy and for the most part, I can stomach it by basic avoidance and application of alcohol. There is a very good reason why they started putting restaurants with bars in the malls.
It’s not really the music, per se, but the people they get to sing it. I mean, Kenny Rogers singing “Mary, Did You Know?” It’s bad enough that I can never decide if that song is intentionally maudlin and pathetic or truly a sweet and touching homage to the relationship between the King of Peace and his mortal mother - and really, guys, Mary knew. She didn’t exactly get handed a message reading “ Angel stopped by, messiah due in nine months” she spoke with Gabriel. Face to face. He said, hey you mind bearing a child by a supernatural, absentee father who will one day ritually sacrifice him in order to purportedly save the entire population of the world, without even the side benefit of sex first and she said- it’s documented- sure, whatevs. In what strange and terrifying hell-verse was that concept birthed? It’s just ... creepy. I mean, have you seen Kenny Rogers recently? A man who looks like he’s walking around with a pineapple liberally spiked with lemon juice lodged in his rectum has no business singing about the Virgin Mary.
And what sticks in my craw is the way everyone gets this image of the perfect life shoved in their face nonstop. You’re finally an adult. You’ve survived your parents and high school and possibly college and you’ve got a wife (or girlfriend or boyfriend whatever) you’ve got a house or at least a roof over your head and a job and you’ve done it. You’ve accomplished the big three. And some marketing plan is determined to show you, in explicit detail, how very much this is not good enough. You are not living a life comprised of big screen Tvs and high def what-nots and vacations to Vail or Aspen and what if you don’t have children or are single on New Year’s? You are totally missing the big picture. There will be no pitter-patter of little feet rushing toward the tree Christmas morning in wide-eyed wonder to proclaim you the best mom or dad in the world and even if you do have children, what if you’re not really comfortable with lying to your kids about Santa Claus, that good old Peeping Tom? You have obviously scarred them for life. Like some dickwad somewhere has the right to invalidate all your life choices because he’s not really comfortable with his own.
And Santa Claus- the ulitmate cult icon of consumerism- is definitely part of it. The very concept of Santa Claus is psychotic. He’s a jolly old elf- WHO SPIES ON CHILDREN. Who watches, apparently, their every movement and then judges them on some arbitrary personal scale of worth and value, setting them up for failure from the very start. You better not pout, you better not cry? Dude, they’re children. I’m over thirty and I want to pout when the President bumps my favorite show for an address on the state of the union, and I not only care about the state of the union, I love listening to our current President speak. It seems glaringly obvious to me that the whole thing was established by someone who obviously didn’t get his Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas one year and is determined someone, if not everyone, share his pain.
Yeah, I hate that movie, and I’m not exactly a fan of A Charlie Brown Christmas either.
I freely admit to being a misanthrope and internally focused. But I strongly dislike watching, every year, the Season of Lights be continuously strip-mined for financial profit. As misanthropic as I might be, I do believe in taking time to make sure the people I let into my life know exactly how beloved to me they are, and how valued and truly cherished. And I refuse to take just one day out of the year to do it. Too much value is taken in December 25th.
I hate to sound so naive, but the spirit of Christmas should be a year-long event.
So I challenge you. I challenge each and every one of you who read this to do a random act of compassion on the people you carry affection for. Next time you are out and see something you know will delight someone you know, get it for them, for no reason other than than it will delight them. Send a letter to an old friend, out of the blue. Donate to a charity they believe in, in their name. Remember that love is a year-round event and sacred, not because Jesus was born in December- well, he wasn’t. If he really existed, he was born right around the same time he died- but because without it we cannot fully understand the human experience. Donate your time or gently used clothing or money to something you find worthwhile and do it not for this ridiculous concept of Christmas, but because human beings, even the isolated, misanthropic ones, need other human beings.
Even if only for someone else to look down on.
And while you’re at it, if you truly wish to gift me this Yuletide, take a moment to be kind to yourself as well. That’s all I can ask for.
Through the year we will all will be together.
If the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
So my lack of love for the horrordays doesn’t actually stem from some deep seated emotional trauma, despite popular theory. Mostly, it’s confusion. I find myself spending most of the holidays imitating the RCA dog - head cocked to the side with baffled incomprehension coloring my expression.
Let’s start with the decorations. I just don’t get it. I understand where they come from. It’s the arse end of the year. It’s cold and dark and the weather, especially around these parts, sucks donkey balls. Your skin itches and your nose runs and the damn furnace is always making funny noises. We need to hang up green things to remind us spring will come and bright lights to drive back the darkness and maybe, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Pratchett, to remind the sun to do a proper day’s work.
But a nine foot tall inflated Santa Claus, that seems to always be running at half-mast? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? So a couple strands of lights in a tree, or maybe some battery operated candles in the window - not my type of battery operated device but to each their own, I always say- sure. I can even stomach those white-lighted reindeer and the weird spiral things that are supposed to be Christmas trees but in all honesty, if your lawn is so filled with multicolored objets de bad taste, to the point the local airport is considering contacting the FAA because you’re causing pilots to divert from their flight plans, something is wrong with you. Like, the mall Santa touched you in the no-no wrong. Daddy dressed up as St. Nick and climbed down the chimney to deliver presents and got stuck and DIED wrong.
And people, please- lighted candy canes? In a row or even circling a tree? At best, it looks like they’re holding the tree hostage and worst, like a cemetery for tasteful decorations.
And don’t get me started on the music. Okay, too late. I know that the majority of Christmas music was thought up by some hack on Madison Avenue to sell candy and for the most part, I can stomach it by basic avoidance and application of alcohol. There is a very good reason why they started putting restaurants with bars in the malls.
It’s not really the music, per se, but the people they get to sing it. I mean, Kenny Rogers singing “Mary, Did You Know?” It’s bad enough that I can never decide if that song is intentionally maudlin and pathetic or truly a sweet and touching homage to the relationship between the King of Peace and his mortal mother - and really, guys, Mary knew. She didn’t exactly get handed a message reading “ Angel stopped by, messiah due in nine months” she spoke with Gabriel. Face to face. He said, hey you mind bearing a child by a supernatural, absentee father who will one day ritually sacrifice him in order to purportedly save the entire population of the world, without even the side benefit of sex first and she said- it’s documented- sure, whatevs. In what strange and terrifying hell-verse was that concept birthed? It’s just ... creepy. I mean, have you seen Kenny Rogers recently? A man who looks like he’s walking around with a pineapple liberally spiked with lemon juice lodged in his rectum has no business singing about the Virgin Mary.
And what sticks in my craw is the way everyone gets this image of the perfect life shoved in their face nonstop. You’re finally an adult. You’ve survived your parents and high school and possibly college and you’ve got a wife (or girlfriend or boyfriend whatever) you’ve got a house or at least a roof over your head and a job and you’ve done it. You’ve accomplished the big three. And some marketing plan is determined to show you, in explicit detail, how very much this is not good enough. You are not living a life comprised of big screen Tvs and high def what-nots and vacations to Vail or Aspen and what if you don’t have children or are single on New Year’s? You are totally missing the big picture. There will be no pitter-patter of little feet rushing toward the tree Christmas morning in wide-eyed wonder to proclaim you the best mom or dad in the world and even if you do have children, what if you’re not really comfortable with lying to your kids about Santa Claus, that good old Peeping Tom? You have obviously scarred them for life. Like some dickwad somewhere has the right to invalidate all your life choices because he’s not really comfortable with his own.
And Santa Claus- the ulitmate cult icon of consumerism- is definitely part of it. The very concept of Santa Claus is psychotic. He’s a jolly old elf- WHO SPIES ON CHILDREN. Who watches, apparently, their every movement and then judges them on some arbitrary personal scale of worth and value, setting them up for failure from the very start. You better not pout, you better not cry? Dude, they’re children. I’m over thirty and I want to pout when the President bumps my favorite show for an address on the state of the union, and I not only care about the state of the union, I love listening to our current President speak. It seems glaringly obvious to me that the whole thing was established by someone who obviously didn’t get his Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas one year and is determined someone, if not everyone, share his pain.
Yeah, I hate that movie, and I’m not exactly a fan of A Charlie Brown Christmas either.
I freely admit to being a misanthrope and internally focused. But I strongly dislike watching, every year, the Season of Lights be continuously strip-mined for financial profit. As misanthropic as I might be, I do believe in taking time to make sure the people I let into my life know exactly how beloved to me they are, and how valued and truly cherished. And I refuse to take just one day out of the year to do it. Too much value is taken in December 25th.
I hate to sound so naive, but the spirit of Christmas should be a year-long event.
So I challenge you. I challenge each and every one of you who read this to do a random act of compassion on the people you carry affection for. Next time you are out and see something you know will delight someone you know, get it for them, for no reason other than than it will delight them. Send a letter to an old friend, out of the blue. Donate to a charity they believe in, in their name. Remember that love is a year-round event and sacred, not because Jesus was born in December- well, he wasn’t. If he really existed, he was born right around the same time he died- but because without it we cannot fully understand the human experience. Donate your time or gently used clothing or money to something you find worthwhile and do it not for this ridiculous concept of Christmas, but because human beings, even the isolated, misanthropic ones, need other human beings.
Even if only for someone else to look down on.
And while you’re at it, if you truly wish to gift me this Yuletide, take a moment to be kind to yourself as well. That’s all I can ask for.
Through the year we will all will be together.
If the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.