You're Killing Christmas
I think you can draw a chart of "Christmas Cheer vs. Exposure to Christmas Music" and it would look like this:
As you can see, the decline is precipitous, after an initial attempt to hang on to cheerfulness despite the onslaught.
Mall employees are at "Make it STOP" by November 1.
Now, I've been hearing a lot of hate for me and my fellow atheist brethren. We are automatically cited as the source of all Christmas Dampening. (I would argue that it is members of minority religions who are actually offended/threatened/feel marginalized and stomped on by the glitter-confetti-cloud that is Christmas and we atheists are primarily more of the "woo yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too! You know that when I say it it means nothing, right?" mindset.)
But, honestly, one city here or there choosing not to put up a nativity scene is NOT attacking Christmas. It would be like saying a mosquito is attacking an elephant's butt. Oh, it might manage to get some sustenance through that rock-hard hide, but the elephant is probably not going to notice.
What's killing Christmas? The ever-rising WAR to hype it harder than the next guy. I mean... don't you think that you should leave the light displays to Nela Park and Public Square, suburban guy with too much time on his hands and no fear of a high electric bill? Now your neighbor thinks she's got to put some up, too. Where does it all end??
I am literally exhausted by Christmas, and I'm not Christian, and I didn't put up a tree this year. I just hung a wreath. No, I'm not going to send cards, either. That was exhausting last year, man.
CARDS. There's another way we are killing Christmas. At work, I got dragged into a project to create and distribute an email "card" from the school. It wouldn't have been an onerous project if people who did not know how to trick an email client into changing it's from address (It has to come "from" the Dean, and not his mailing list or 'on behalf of', no, we need his actual email there so it looks SINCERE) or how to embed an image or how to photoshop an image all wanted to be 'part' of the project.
So yeah, I ended up doing a LOT of it, in parts, for various people who will get the credit. Welcome to IT. I digress. The fact of it is, I have gotten no fewer than 10 "cards" via email this week from vendors and every single one of them made me groan, "UGH. SPAM." and hit delete as fast as I could. Why, dear holy hand-grenade of Antioch, does anyone think OUR e-card will be greeted in any other manner? Why do the higher-ups feel this NEED, this pressing, urgent desire, to annoy their business contacts with spam? I have the answer: BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT. They don't want to not meet this year's newly raised bar for holiday pseudo-participation.
End the madness. Save Christmas. Stop doing stuff for Christmas!
As you can see, the decline is precipitous, after an initial attempt to hang on to cheerfulness despite the onslaught.
Mall employees are at "Make it STOP" by November 1.
Now, I've been hearing a lot of hate for me and my fellow atheist brethren. We are automatically cited as the source of all Christmas Dampening. (I would argue that it is members of minority religions who are actually offended/threatened/feel marginalized and stomped on by the glitter-confetti-cloud that is Christmas and we atheists are primarily more of the "woo yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too! You know that when I say it it means nothing, right?" mindset.)
But, honestly, one city here or there choosing not to put up a nativity scene is NOT attacking Christmas. It would be like saying a mosquito is attacking an elephant's butt. Oh, it might manage to get some sustenance through that rock-hard hide, but the elephant is probably not going to notice.
What's killing Christmas? The ever-rising WAR to hype it harder than the next guy. I mean... don't you think that you should leave the light displays to Nela Park and Public Square, suburban guy with too much time on his hands and no fear of a high electric bill? Now your neighbor thinks she's got to put some up, too. Where does it all end??
I am literally exhausted by Christmas, and I'm not Christian, and I didn't put up a tree this year. I just hung a wreath. No, I'm not going to send cards, either. That was exhausting last year, man.
CARDS. There's another way we are killing Christmas. At work, I got dragged into a project to create and distribute an email "card" from the school. It wouldn't have been an onerous project if people who did not know how to trick an email client into changing it's from address (It has to come "from" the Dean, and not his mailing list or 'on behalf of', no, we need his actual email there so it looks SINCERE) or how to embed an image or how to photoshop an image all wanted to be 'part' of the project.
So yeah, I ended up doing a LOT of it, in parts, for various people who will get the credit. Welcome to IT. I digress. The fact of it is, I have gotten no fewer than 10 "cards" via email this week from vendors and every single one of them made me groan, "UGH. SPAM." and hit delete as fast as I could. Why, dear holy hand-grenade of Antioch, does anyone think OUR e-card will be greeted in any other manner? Why do the higher-ups feel this NEED, this pressing, urgent desire, to annoy their business contacts with spam? I have the answer: BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT. They don't want to not meet this year's newly raised bar for holiday pseudo-participation.
End the madness. Save Christmas. Stop doing stuff for Christmas!