A Very Merry Fuck You, and A Happy Go To Hell!

December is for most a time when the hustle and bustle of gift buying and exchanging is paramount on their list of things to do, and they set about extolling their dangerous festive mindset to anybody within earshot. Self centered selfish kids make up mile long lists of shit they feel they are owed, and expect morbidly obese bearded man (who may or may not be a pedophile) to deliver them, no questions asked.

So where to begin with this shit storm of things that seek to induce projectile vomiting? Do we start with the fat man that defies all conventions of what children are taught? Or with the obligatory gift giving that permeates the month? Or how about the myriad of lame parties all seeking to show off someone’s home or reacquaint forgotten friends with each other in the hopes of expanding the haul of gifts? Or perhaps we begin with the spewing of good tidings from people we don’t know and how they impose the expectation that we stand behind their religious ideology for a holiday that has been too far commercialized to really have any religious symbolism left in it?

I think I’ll start with the fat man and see where we end up. Now most any realistic parent will tell you that they stable their dislike for the holiday and simply endure the bullshit for the sake of their children. Now these children are another matter entirely. Too many books written on positive reinforcement and how to properly discipline your child focusing on reasoning with the child instead of going old school and doing it the way your parents did it, have produced an entire generation of children that feel they are in charge and able to dictate to anyone how to have their way. So these kids are pandered to with TV shows so insipid and thought destroying that they begin to exist in a world where everything has a neat solution and nothing terribly bad ever really happens.

Now this same crop of snot nosed, self serving, juice box drinkers make up huge lists of demands to be forwarded to an morbidly obese fat man with the expectation that he’ll deliver a slew of crap free of charge and without expectation for recompense, furthering the belief these kids have of the world provided free lunches at every turn. Now the down side is that the majority of these kids will pitch a huge fit if their exact demands are not met in any way.

The true meat of this demon though is not just in the way that it furthers the idea of entitlement to a generation of kids that already feel they’re owed the world, or even the fact that it rewards children already so spoiled rotten that their parent’s bargain with them when they misbehave instead of just outright beating their asses, but instead, the problem lies in the double standard it promotes. All year long children are told to ignore and avoid contact with “strangers”. However for one month out of the year, kids are encouraged to write long letters flaunting all of the half assed good things they’ve done, exemplified, or exhibited over the past eleven months, most of which comes under the heading of just not being a complete ass of a child, and they mail their ramblings en masse through an already failing postal system to a guy they’ve never met, let alone actually seen outside of a TV special. The double standard doesn’t end here though, oh no. See I’m going to take it a step further, because when a child believes in an invisible fat man employing midgets in a socialist setting without the benefit of time off, pension plans, retirement, vacation, unions, or even a business model that falls under the eye of Fair Work and Labor Board, that child is considered young, innocent, pure, or unaware of the depravity that exists outside of his perfect little suburban life. However if an adult believes in anything unseen or verified by the rest of society at large (see Bigfoot, Son of Sam, or your local crazy hobo) or as is told in so many useless holiday movies, they actually believe themselves to be the slave driving white man with the beer gut and the dangerously high cholesterol, that adult is committed to a rubber room, made to stand trial, or just genuinely seen to be a massive pain in the ass for the rest of society. What makes it okay for a kid to believe in shit that makes no sense but it’s not okay for an adult? I mean we don’t institutionalize people for believing the bible, even though ninety percent of what comes from it is bullshit and used by people like the Westboro Baptist Church to promote hate, intolerance, and bigotry. So why the difference in treatment? I mean we’ll pay a guy to dress up in a red suit and let a slew of screaming, whining, selfish, sick brats sit on the guy’s lap and ask for useless shit, but if the guy in the suit claims himself to actually be the real douche bag he’s portraying then we have him committed for being a danger. It’s like adult society insists that you can’t adhere to the belief that Santa Claus is real, but by the same token, if you’re a kid you almost have to. Your parents actually promote you writing letters asking for free stuff to a guy that is essentially a slave driver making exclusive use of a class of people with a medically defined handicap that escapes crimes against humanity charges because he doesn’t turn a profit from the products he distributes.

All I’m saying is that if we’re going to teach children that strangers are bad, don’t promote a letter writing campaign to someone they’ve never met, and further more doesn’t really exist. And if it’s okay for kids to believe in shit that is very plainly not real, and perfectly acceptable for two thirds of the human population to believe in miracles, a bearded man living in the clouds, and a guy that dresses in drag that can turn water into alcohol, why are we keeping the more interesting among us locked up? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

The gift giving is another issue for me because it’s not done out of genuine want, or even out of any sense of altruism, but rather out of obligation. My ex girlfriend hated receiving gifts, but dammit if she didn’t buy one for everybody (sans myself, which always seemed a little weird, it’s like she was married or something), but as much as she professed to do it out of her want to make people happy, I know she did it out of obligation. And most of you buy gifts the same way, you tell yourselves that it’s because you want to, because it will make the people you care most about happy, or that it’s all in the spirit of the season, but really it’s all out of obligation and the fervent hope that if you invest enough time and energy in it, you’ll get something in return that isn’t a huge steaming ball of dog shit. The exchange of gifts has become the primary reason for even passing acknowledgment of the season, with countdowns of how many shopping days are left, organized gift exchanges at both the work place and in social life, and countless commercials, emails, and advertisements championing the “perfect gift”. Just as Thanksgiving is a holiday set aside to promote gluttony, Christmas seems to have been established to encourage greed. Gifts are even given to people we hardly see or like, as peace offerings to bury long gone disputes shrouded in the mists of the past. In-laws that are greeted through clenched teeth, extended family that is hardly known or recognized is welcomed into the home so long as they have an object in hand, and all of them privy to heaps of useless, mass marketed bull shit.

Now if the pandering to kids and the mindless buy in by parents who know they’re perpetuating a bullshit story wasn’t enough, we have countless, and I do mean countless, songs, TV specials, movies, books, stories, shirts, and ceremonies that blast the holiday into the consciousness. You can’t turn around, spit, yell or punch someone without being told to have a happy holiday, wished season’s greetings, or hearing someone spout some tiding of good cheer. The songs are perhaps the most asinine as they promote things that are very decidedly un-Christmas. Rudolph is a ridiculed and insulted reindeer that is harassed, ostracized, insulted and generally disliked member of his species but when the fat man comes asking for assistance due to unforeseen weather conditions, the oft disparaged animal freely acquiesces and the night is saved. The song promotes acceptance of social out casting on the pretense that if suffered long enough individual talents shine through. It’s a topic for another post, but too often ridicule stifles natural development of what could be wonderful abilities in an effort to fit in.

The TV specials promote the notion that no matter how catastrophic the situation all can be made right with a song, a positive attitude, and good will. Sorry kids but the truth is that if your mommy, daddy, grandma, or uncle is on a plane that goes down somewhere in the Rockies, no amount of singing is going to save grandma from hypothermia or starvation. I think they should bring back episodes of The Twilight Zone just to show how weird the world really is.

The movies are just advertising gimmicks that seek to make people warm and fuzzy but reminding us what a family Christmas is all about in storybooks and how little real life is able to resemble it. Families scattered to the furthest reaches of the globe are supposed to come together for a single day of the year, bury old wounds, and share a meal in the interest of good tidings and cheer. In truth most families today are lucky to hear from long lost relatives, let along see them. Tall trees, heavily decorated homes and fresh made eggnog, with the biggest problem at hand being a good moral lesson needing delivery to make someone come home and feel loved, it makes for some really entertaining television. But the truth is that this fairy tale idea of families coming together and feeling closer and working through any hardship together is little more than fabricated fodder meant to call up ideas of a Leave it to Beaver idealism that is long gone and forgotten.

All in all, the holiday wouldn’t be so fucking abhorrent to me if it would just put aside the pretense and exhibit a little honesty. It’s a time of year set aside to promote commercialism, greed, and the accumulation of useless shit, wrapped in the ideation of goodwill and warm feelings, and topped with a bow of pedantic cheer and all of it meant to elicit the behavior of decency that we should show anyway. Dress it up however you like, it’s still an evil holiday, it still stands for little more than corporate greed and commercialism, and at the end of the day, the closest connection you can have with family is the same you share the rest of the year. Getting an overpriced piece of shit in a box isn’t going to endear someone to you anymore than they already are unless your affection can be bought, in which case you should just admit you’re shallow and kill yourself.