Saturday, December 1, 2007

Welcome to December!

I have been saving all of my creative juices for this month, and it’s gonna be a whopper! Actually, I’ve just been lazy and needed an excuse, but it sounded pretty good, didn’t it?

This month, I am going to be trying to post every article in this blog about Christmas, Hanukkah, any other holidays I know about, and the Holiday Season in general. Since, as far as I know, we are no where near any of the holidays in this season, let’s start with the season in general.

First of all, why is it called the Holiday Season? The season is Winter. We established this long before any of these holidays were thought up. The weather and calendar may not agree, but we are in Winter here in the States, so we should not be in any other season. It can’t be any other kind of Season. It’s not like Elmer Fudd is off in the woods wearing his big brown hat going “Be vewy vewy quiet. We’a wookin’ for howidays! Huhuhuhuhu!” Nobody is hunting it down and we are in either Winter or Autumn, depending on weather and calendar. So I see no reason to call it the Holiday Season.

However, since there are many definitions of Season, and we are adding more every time the occasion arises, it seems we must conclude that this is a season for Holidays. Why? Because the government refuses to acknowledge any specific holiday. The stores, on the other hand, they got plenty of guts to pick a holiday. Which one do they pick? Do they pick Kwanzaa? Nah, they might look racist. Do they pick Hanukkah? Never! That supports rebellion over a tyrannous ruler, which was basically struggling and war and all of the things the stores don’t want people to know about until it’s time for charities. So, which one did they pick? Christmas! Of course! It may be religious, unlike Kwanzaa, and it is only two days out of the month, unlike Hanukkah, but there is no limit on the presents! You can buy as many as you want!

The stores have found the mother load, and it is brought once a year by a fat man in a red coat that practically screams “I’M ON SALE!” They have all sorts of gifts for people to buy on Christmas. Do you know why? Because a Christmas gift can be ANYTHING! You could buy a tiny piece of plastic dog crap, wrap it up - you don’t even need a box - and place it under the tree for the unsuspecting person you are giving it to on this wonderful holiday. If it can be held, it can be a gift. If it can’t be held, it can be in the spirit of Christmas. If anything good happens, it’s a Christmas miracle, and it was all Santa’s doing. Still wonder why the stores picked this holiday?

What I noticed, though, is that, the stores may celebrate Christmas, for recently mentioned obvious reasons, but they never really mention it. More and more, the fat man is shown, the red and green lights are strewn about, but the word Christmas is rarely shown anymore. It was X-mas, as though they had forgotten how to spell Christ, but that was a poor attempt to remove the religion from it to get more customers other than Christians to buy stuff for the occasion. But now, they stopped saying Christmas as often as they can get away with it. They have started to fall into the void of the Holiday Season. It is still Christmas they are celebrating (Black Friday has nothing to do with Kwanzaa, you don’t see any Hanukkah bushes lying around) but they call it the Holiday season, just to please the locals.

If you ask me, I’ve never shopped for Winter unless I was getting a coat, and I’ve never shot Christmas unless you include a few strange games online. The Holiday Season, is Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Let’s leave it at that and let everyone celebrate their own holiday.

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