I hate Christmas. It's superficial and all about the delusion of selflessness. It's the perfect storm of self-absorbed, whiny hypocrisy dressed up in rampant consumerism, religious zealotry, or - even more abominably - both. After 49 years of life and observation of humanity, I'm happy to declare the jury to be in on the matter of Christmas: it sucks.
Why are people nice only during Christmas? Surely, if they actually believed in the Christmas spirit, they'd know that it's more important to be nice when it's not expected than when it is. What makes people think that they can be nice to each other for a couple of weeks each year, and then - as soon as they abandon their New Year's resolutions because they're weak and undisciplined - go back to treating other people like shit?
Not that they're all that nice, anyways. Try grabbing the last item on a shelf at almost any store during the Christmas shopping frenzy and see how quickly you're tackled by some soccer mom or football dad desperate to buy that very same thing. Yeah, that's the ol' Christmas spirit!
And how many times do you get cut off trying to park your car at the mall by some self-absorbed fart-brained jerk - after all, they're soooo much more important than you. Sure, that happens all year round, but it gets worse at Christmas.
And if you want to see truly feral viciousness, try not being sycophantically sweet to someone. They'll turn on you as if you just admitted to liking human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Not only are we expected to be hypocritically nice at Christmas, those of us who are just truthful are ostracized for our honesty.
And why is it necessary to buy presents at all? Isn't the Christmas spirit about other things? I've seen kids so spoilt that they are literally standing thigh-deep in toys on Christmas day, all of which lose their shine by Christmas lunch. That's an incredibly healthy message to be sending the next generation, isn't it?
And could we be a little more religiously biased about Christmas? I don't think so. How come Christians get to celebrate with two weeks off work, a trip to Cabo, carollers singing about bullshit outside your door, saccharine movies like It's A Wonderful Life, and pictures of Sweet Babay Jesus everywhere, while every other religion gets (often literally) left out in the cold?
Not to mention that the guy people call Jesus Christ was born some time between April and October, depending on who you believe. Having Christmas at the end of December is just a political ploy by the Catholic Church to co-opt a pagan ritual (Saturnalia) and thereby disarm it as a source of heathenism and blasphemy. More selfish bullshit by cowards who haven't even got the stones to tell people simple truths.
Let's be frank: the only reason anyone does anything nice is that it brings them pleasure: the giver feels good by giving. We give because we are selfishly concerned with making ourselves, and no one else, feel good. Spiritualists of all sorts will say that this pleasure comes form knowing they've contributed to someone else's happiness. Hogswallop. There's no collective consciousness; only the selfishness of our genetic makeup that arose through evolution. Making others happy helps keep the "herd" happy, which helps ensure our membership in it, which brings us security from external dangers - i.e. pleasure. This was a lesson learnt aeons ago at the neuro-chemical level; there's no reason to pad it out with all this touchy-feely, there-must-be-something-more-to-life, sanctimonious crap.
Then Boxing Day comes, and the claws really come out. The very next day after Christmas, and the masses are trampling each other to get an extra 10% off that plasma TV, that little black dress they couldn't afford two days before, that power drill they'll use once a year when they're feeling particularly inadequate, and those Christmas cards they'll store till next year because they're such tightwads that they aren't even willing to buy a $4 card at full price for their own family members.
And what do we hear about at the water cooler in January when we're all back at work? We hear about how much too much we ate, where we went for vacation, how drunk we got, how horribly embarrassing the family get-together was, how many useless boxer briefs and pairs of socks were given and received, the inevitable jokes about concrete-like fruit cakes made by dear old Aunt Matilda, and of course all the bullshit resolutions we made and will break by mid-February.
That's how we remember Christmas.
If that's what Christmas is to you, then you can have it. I'll just keep doing the best I can, every day, and sneer from a discrete distance at your self-deluded, rose-coloured fantasy.
Recent Comments