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Totvi 12-26-07: "Christmas always gives me a boner."
"You can say there's
no such thing as Santa,
but as for me and Grandpa,
we believe."
-Randy Brooks.
And not in that nice "I wanna bang your sister till my eyes bleed" kinda way either. I'm talking about holidays aggravating the shit out of me. Holidays in general give me a mental boner for some reason. Maybe it's some weird twisted thing about how I grew up Catholic and saw my whole family around a big fat Christmas tree overflowing with presents until about twelve or thirteen years ago. Maybe it's just that life is so frustrating. But it's not the kinda nice happy boner I want to have; it becomes an aggravating boner that gets in the way of everything and feels uncomfortable to walk with because I am wearing cotton shorts aggravating. To me, that's what Christmas is: I have to put up with it. But why do I bite my tongue and take it every time someone wishes me a Merry Christmas?
"Enjoy your christmas!"
"Merry Christmas!"
"Have a great-"
And these are all coworkers or people I bump into at the 7-11 or Mall or what not on a daily basis who are also working on December 25th, just like me, who volunteered to be there. Has any one of these people ever considered that the reason I am working, the reason I volunteered to spend this day making two and a half times my normal rate of pay, is because I don't celebrate christian holidays? What if I were Jewish? What if I were Muslim or Buddhist? Would you walk up to some Buddhist and wish them a Merry Christmas?! Wouldn't you, at some point in your relationship with me, say something like "Hey, so, are you a Christian?" Is that too blunt? No, you just wish me a Merry Christmas, assuming I am.
No, chances are you wouldn't. You would have no problem with that if you were a christian, and although that is the basis of the problem at least it's getting better. When I was a kid everybody said it. There wasn't any political correctness of any kind or sensitivity towards other religions or lack of religions with anyone in my immediate circle of family and friends- you either celebrated christmas or...well, there really wasn't anything else you could do.
But then things started to change. Christians were starting to lose their faith, finally. Starting to say "What the hell do you mean I have to live my life the way child molesters tell me to live it" and moving on with their lives. A lot of them found thinking freely is more acceptable than following the herd to slaughter? Who knows. I really can't answer that for anyone else. By the time the nineties came along and priests started going to jail and people started finding all the hidden millions in churches around the world people started waking up. Christmas became more Americanized, but it's still like heroin just like it's supposed to be.
I came close this year too. Every year, right around the first or second week of December, I get it in my head that I need to get gifts for people for Christmas. I need to spend money I don't have on people I don't like by getting them things they don't need or want or will ever use. I even say stuff like "Oh, but it's not 'CHRISTmas' anymore, it's just an Americanized version of it, which makes it okay!" And then somehow I cajole my significant other into letting me spend rent money on anything I can get my hands on to show my loved ones I care about them. Oh yeah, I talk about Santa and giving gifts and how it's just tradition and screw the christians for bringing their religion into such a nice holiday and all that nonsense and really work up all the debates in my own head to somehow rationalize Christmas. The most common one is, well, "it's for the kids," and that usually wins over all other arguments.
This year I got just past making cookies in a jar for a few close loved ones, putting little cards on them and putting them in a bag to hand out to people- and stopped. I stopped hard though. My wife stopped just shortly after that, after insisting we get our fourteen month old some toys for Christmas. Inside my head I wanted to spend my money like it was hurting having it, but outside I tried as best I could to reign us both in. We spent thirty dollars we didn't have on toys he really likes but doesn't really need. We spent half an hour getting them out of the packages and he just played with his toys all night and he liked it. Two days later he's still enjoying them so I can't complain. Six months from now they'll still be used, so it's not a total loss, even if they are used by someone else's kid.
Christmas, the act of giving, the holiday as a whole, has become nothing but a vacuum for people's money. It's addicting, I know! You can't go anywhere without ten thousand little bitty things to buy for people. There are sales on things you'd never ever want the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, but what the hell! You just got your paycheck and why not! Of course that guy next door that you see twice a week parking his car in your spot would LOVE a three dollar chrome plated beard trimmer!
Our entire economy is based around this time of year. You watch any news program and all they talk about is how much money we spent this year and how that's going to affect business and how companies are depending on sales to make it through so they can make the next best thing. Christmas movies all have the same theme, give give give give!!! You just can't help yourself. NOT GIVING IS JUST WRONG!!! Who cares if you don't like the person, just GIVE FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!! PLEASE!!!
Argh!!!
And to think it's just that twenty-five percent of the polled American Public who still think George is doing a fine job. The same people who blindly follow our King are the same twenty five percent of the population that force the rest of us into spending our money to keep the place afloat. Don't worry about the TRILLIONS...
(what comes after trillion? There's Million, Billion, Trillion...then what? It's QUADRILLION. You know what a quadrillion looks like? 1,000,000,000,000,000! That's a One with FIFTEEN fucking zeroes after it and we are two thirds of the way there in the amount of money we've spent on One Single War.)
...of dollars spent on Iraq. Oh, don't worry about the BILLIONS of dollars the Oil companies have been gouging out of our pockets the last several years with the assistance and encouragement of our own oil-ected officials. No worries. Just spend that rent money on shit you'd never spend otherwise because it's CHRISTMAS! Don't worry that our entire country (except for a teensie weensie bit of that twenty-five percent leading the rest of them like cattle to slaughter, a few percent of that percent OWN everything) is going up shit's creek without even a semblance of a paddle. Don't worry. Next month HALF of us will be looking for work because our economy crashes around us but it's all good. No worries. George is doing a great job.
Yeah. All I have to do is remember those uneducated, ignorant, right wing christian, bigoted twenty-five percent. That's where all our issues stem from- that we still have (and how I have no fucking idea) seventy-five million people in America that say "Oh yeah, he's doing a fantastic job, y'all" while their next door neighbors get molested by priests and the kids down the street are abused by their right wing alcoholic parents and the trailer park next door overflows with people who can't afford to live otherwise (but go to church every sunday!) and every corporation out there gouges them for every last cent of their salaries because it's Christian to SPEND YOUR MONEY.
I really didn't want to make this a political statement, but I see no other way to describe to people what Christmas has become. It's not just some Americanized version of a Christian tradition. It's not the celebration of the birth of some guy that might have been born two thousand years ago. It's not about waiting for Santa to come flying around the world in his sleigh and delivering gifts to nice children and throwing the finger at kids who were naughty. It's not. Look around you. It's just a vaccuum to suck the money out of your pockets. It's like saying "Merry Suck the Money out of your wallet Day!" Why would I want to celebrate that?? Why should we, as an intelligent society, be sucked in?
Because just like heroin, we need it. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted. We wouldn't help a blind man cross a street the rest of the year but let's spend exorbant amounts of our money on people we don't like. It's tradition. It's ridiculous. And yet we fall for it every year. We get sucked in every single year.
But don't worry. We're getting smarter, as a society. In a few years, we'll be able to go our Merry way without dumping our wallets out and still feel good about ourselves the next morning. At the very least people might stop wishing me a Merry Fucking Christmas without asking if I even give a rat's ass.
Live long and get naked.
-Natey
ps.
Yes, I know, to those of you paying attention it's been over a year since I wrote one of these and who knows- maybe I'll write some more. In the meantime, join me in The Thrifty Chicken Super Center forum for some nice conversation, weird things and fun stuff.
And chicken.
Submitted by natey on Thursday, December 27, 2007 (12:12:42) (1168 reads)
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Re: Totvi 12-26-07: "Christmas always gives me a boner."
(Score: 1 )
by hotstuff on Thursday, December 27, 2007 (23:18:53) |
Ahhh Natey, how I've missed your ramblings!  I totally agree. What really sucks is when you buy things for everyone else (because you have to) and totally can't even buy yourself what you've wanted for months  Gotcha..it's tradition.
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