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I hate the holidays, and glad they’re over… for a minute. Only 279 days until the start of the 2009 Holiday season, and 364 more shopping days left ’til Christmas, bitches! Deck the malls!
Yeah… maybe I’m a Scrooge or a grinch, but I say bullshit. There’s no such thing as Christmas spirit anymore. There’s just buy buy buy! Sale sale sale! Now 30% off this shit, and 50% off that shit! Cities and towns decorate their streets not for the spirit, but to entice consumers to consume. Fuck each and every goddamned television and radio commercial for whoring themselves for our money. Fuck every newspaper ad and insert offering an insane discount on that must-have lead-laden crap made in China. Fuck the goddamned throngs of inconsiderate, mindless assholes that crowd every mall, department store, and curio shop in search of the perfect gift… or a gift that will suffice.
I’m not a religious man at all, yet I can’t help but laugh at how a religious event has been twisted into a reason to buy things. Whether you believe December 25 is a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, or a Christian celebration of the approximate birthday of Jesus, the roots of Christmas are based in religion not capitalism.
Back in the 1650s, Puritans in Massachusetts banned the celebration of Christmas for nearly three decades because they saw it as a throwback to their Crown roots. They couldn’t take time off from work, have a big feast, decorate their homes, etc. Even when the law was overturned, the disdain for Christmas continued for many years. In fact, Christmas in America attracted about as much attention as Kwanzaa does today until the mid 1800s. But, just after the Civil War, retailers realized they could use the Christmas season to market their shit we gotta have. Their first hurdle was getting Protestants to let go of their hostility towards Christmas. Then President Ulysses S. Grant designated Christmas a federal holiday in 1870, promoting the secular aspects of the holiday. Ever since then, the holiday season of advertising and commercialization has gotten out of hand.
If you’re less than 80 years old, you grew up with the heart-warming story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer who saved Christmas with his nose so bright. But that entire story was made up by an employee of Montgomery Ward. A national Christmas icon created by a department store in order to sell more crap, then immortalized in songs, television, movies, and comic books. While Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa Claus, they definitely “standardized” the image of a jolly fat man, with rosy cheeks and a flowing white beard wearing a gaudy pimp suit.
Now that same happy image sits on thrones in department stores across the country, surrounded by “elves” in curly-toed shoes and long lines of selfish, greedy vaginal vermin begging for Red Ryder BB guns and dolls that piss themselves. I offer a hearty fuck you to all you parents and your children who have infested our retail outlets with incessant screeching and crying. We should pass a law that outlaws these prepubescent shitstains from throwing a fucking tantrum in a public store, and punish their non-confrontational, tree-hugging, soy-eating parents for not smacking the fuck out of their misbehaving brats!
Christmas is all about the almighty dollar nowadays, as evidenced by the non-stop holiday ads in every form of media. It’s ridiculous. It’s like driving down skid row looking for a hooker. They’re all dressed provocatively, as if to say, “pick me, pick me!” C’mon, you know it’s true! Especially when you realize you’re looking for the best deal for the least amount of money. “Sucky sucky five dolla? Me love you long time.” Or, “Garmin GPS hundred dolla?” No difference.
The recent economic recession seems to made things worse: holiday email spam, television ads, radio ads, junk mail, “Christmasized” logos on retailer’s web sites… It’s a constant barrage of holiday marketing that retailers hoped would make a bad economy a bit better. Christ! There’s over 50 shopping channels broadcasting 24 hours a day, and late-night television is lousy with paid programming. Who the fuck is buying all this shit in the middle of the night? If the economy is so bad, why haven’t all these sleep-deprived materialistic fuckwads with credit cards and a shipping address heard about it?
Of course, the holiday ads don’t stop on December 25. Oh no. There’s the “After Christmas” sale, the “Post-Christmas Sale-abration” sale, the “December Clearance” sale, the “New Year” sale, the “Boxing Day” sale, the “Everything Must Go” sale… whatever the time, the retailers have a sale for it. If there was truth in advertising, there’d only be one kind of sale — the “Buy Our Shit So We Won’t Have To Be Bailed Out By The Government” sale. Fuck TARP and fuck Prince Henry, too!
Why do they always pin the hopes of their bottom line on four to six weeks of holiday discounts? Doesn’t it make sense to market like it’s the holidays all year long? Maybe if they did, so much attention wouldn’t be paid to their economic well-being at Christmas and we can get back to the real reason for the season.
But the holidays aren’t JUST about capitalism. Even though it’s only for one week a year, families put aside their differences and get together to celebrate a tradition. People are usually more generous during the Chrismahanukwanzakah season, and the shear amount of alcohol consumption makes everyone appear happier. However, the impending debt, crowded stores, stupid greeting cards, ungrateful phony attitudes, and endless drone of the old tired Christmas songs just makes me hate the time of year all the more…. which leads to posts like this. It’s more predicable than the first snow.
Fuck it. That’s all for today. Tina’s already shot me several disapproving glares for writing yet another annual “I hate Christmas” post. I’ll have my annual year in review post sometime before the new year… hopefully.
