Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," today hosting a worn-out, frazzled wreck of a female who's trying bad moods on for size! WHERE'S THE XXXL?
You know what holiday I hate? Xmas. Cancel that dud, and do it now!
It's bad enough that department stores start decking their halls with boughs of holly in September, but now things have gotten even worse. Halloween wasn't even rung in and out before all the stores everywhere were shoving it aside for Xmas!
Pardon the rare burst of bad language, but that sucks.
I can't really blame the Christians for this despicable annual ploy to separate me from my money and my sanity. Xmas has always been marked by various praise and worship teams, some of them in lavish ways. In these modern times it belongs exclusively to Jesus, however, so I'm gonna heave my bad mood in that direction.
Can we skip it? Please?
Recipe for disaster? Take the darkest month of the year (Northern Hemisphere) and shove a merry, jolly, ho ho holiday right into the darkest part of it. Bombard people with subliminal messages that equate gift-giving with immortality and/or orgasms. Expect people to host dinners and parties for people they don't even like in the summertime. And the best part? Watch your kids bite their lips as their friends show off new, fancy tech equipment that their parents can afford and you can't.
Just once. Just once in my life. Just once in my life I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE GRINCH TAKE THAT SLED UP TO THE TOP OF MOUNT KRUMPIT AND DUMP DUMP DUMP IT!
I'm not mean like Ebenezer Scrooge. I'm just sick of everything that goes with Xmas. I would like to be able to go into stores and not have my eyeballs filled to the plimsol line with red and green glitz! As my friend Seitou pointed out the other evening, who picked that color scheme, anyway! That shit don't match!
(Well, that's not how she put it. She's more ladylike. But still, she's right.)
You know what? There's only one place on Earth where I can have any control over Xmas overload. And that is right here at TGAB.
Time for a pledge.
I pledge avoidance
of the fact
that Christmas is coming.
I will not mention it
in any way, shape, or form,
from this moment
until December 24, and maybe not then.
Hold me to it. I am fed up as hell with this eternal holiday.
16 comments:
Maybe this dire economy will finally put a few more nails in the coffin of ConsumerMas, so that the Christians can take it back to church with them and get that madness out of our face for once!
I'm with you
I hate it too. I could almost handle it for a week or so, but they start in friggin September and, by the time it finally rolls around, I am SO over it. Spend less and less each year. My circle does a Yule overnight and greats the sunrise the next am. That's what's meaningful for me. I really practice shielding myself this time of year.
Yeah, the best thing is just stay out of the mall, don't watch TV, don't listen to the radio and don't read the newspaper between now and New Year's. That cuts out 90% of it. Plus you get a nice little media vacation too.
It's no better when it's plonked on top of the Summer Solstice, Anne.
I've been clicking that 'Opt Out' link for the last 24 years.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Sounds good to me. I don't have happy childhood memories or even selectively edited almost happy memories of the holiday. Not being an ex- or a former christian means that the marketing of "that day" has always been an assault on my brain and psyche. Although I will admit a weakness for Keith Richards "Run Run Rudolph."
I do like Christmas, but I'm with you about the marketing. It's rather disgusting.
About the green and red color scheme -- do you REALLY want to know where it comes from? I can tell you.
It comes from a Pagan tradition, and the red and green are symbolic of new life (since after solstice is when the sun is starting to come back and will soon enough be bringing new life). Green obviously because of things like green grass and green leaves. Red...sorry if this grosses anyone out, but the red comes from the women's menstrual blood that is part of the cycle that allows us to give life.
Hey, you asked!
Don't forget the non-stop carols piped over the Muzak, starting right after All-Hallows. I gotta tell ya, by the time that the first week of December rolls around, I start to feel like kicking the Little Drummer Boy right in his rump-a-pum-pum.
I like Christmas.... it gets overmarketed, but I can see past all that. When you get right down to it Christmas time really does bring a sense of community and makes people want to give to help that community. It's a beauiful holiday.
I'm going to ask permission to highjack the gift giving orgasm sentence to use as my status as December rolls around. Of course I will note that the sentence was given to the world from Sage Anne Johnson. It made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my oatmeal.
I love this post. LOve, Love, Love it! I agree, and actually my children decided along with myself and their step father to nix the materialism and commercialization this holiday season and go for a more "why we celebrate" approach. Less is more. I wrote about that today on my own blog.
It seems to me that it gets more overbearing as Thanksgiving becomes more ignored. Down here in the South we used to make a big deal over Thanksgiving and even had to go to Church on that day. It was all about being grateful and frankly was a big final Harvest festival. Now it has become the Feast of Gluttany and the doorway to the time of Greed.
I can't help but wonder if fixing Thanksgiving might help fix Christmas too.
BTW I am more plant based in my interpretation- Red +Green = Holly.
Just a thought .... I'm trying to create a more Pagan-based Yule Season! ((seizing back our Season)) I'm shopping at Pagan sites and from Pagan artisans on Etsy.com. I am determined to support Paganomics. I'm going to be playing more seasonal-and-closer-to-Pagan music too! (still trying to discover the best ones for the Season) And I wish a Merry Yule and a Bright Winter Solstice to All!
Jan at Rosemary Cottage
For you:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33543085
(It is vulturific.)
Do you know C. S. Lewis' essay "Christmas and Exmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus"? Rodger Cunningham
I don't mind Christmas, though Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I am glad that media nearly ignores Thanksgiving.
My partner never liked Christmas before we got married, but does now that our Christmas tradition is to have a big Christmas breakfast, and open our one present: new nightgowns or robes or slippers or jammies. That's it. We travel every other year. Last year we got a little fresh tree on the 24th for not too much money and decorated it in the hotel room. But we had one of the teenagers with us, and it gave him something to do. The trip was his present. We really just don't do presents much.
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