How The Grinch Stole Ithsmus

The tree was trimmed and bedecked with lights. A twinkling homunculus wreathed in tinsel and bearing glass globes of stunning fragility. The house surrounding the tree was similarly masked in holiday colors and dotted with small displays of pseudo-religious merriment. The stockings were stealthily stuffed with tasty treats and whatever presents might fit therein. The bulk of the presents were artfully stacked beneath the tree, tags proudly declaring the givers and receivers. The provisions were laid out to be at hand most efficiently when time came to prepare the holiday feast. A month or more of planning and preparing, of scheming, sneaking and white lies all lead up to this whitest of all possible white Christmases. And yet...

The holiday meal was prepared and eaten on the eve of the 24th. Likewise were the stockings and presents exchanged that evening with some small fanfare. Not in and of themselves bad things by any means, just facts to add to the following thesis. The 25th, Christmas, was a day like any other. More so than might at first be thought, and shrugged off. A misstep in the alarm setting process caused the day to begin at roughly noon. Immediately after which, this computer was infected with a most malicious strain of internet-aids that required a large portion of the afternoon to eliminate. A few hours were spent at a friends house playing Halo 3 and watching New Grounds. The evening was dominated by Guild Wars and Hulu, and Christmas Dinner consisted of a sandwich.

None of this is intended to be a complaint, or a gripe, or whining. These are a series of facts that support the following: For a day that a large part of the year leads up to, you'd think someone (anyone, me maybe) would have at least pointed out the fact of the occurrence of the day to someone in a tone other than sarcasm.

I'd like to point out that while the overly religious do in fact make a spectacle out of the day, they do so in a church with long winded anecdotal readings from their chosen holy text. Personally, that's about as anticlimactic as my 'average day' Christmas.

Seriously. Why, aside from consumerism, do we allow such a build up of this day? Families coming together? If your family is estranged enough that they need an arbitrarily designated holiday to visit you, then you have other problems besides planning sleeping arrangements. Devotional excursions with loved ones? Again, you can make time to be with people in July, why wait till the ground is frozen and travel is problematic? Time off work? Look, I refuse to sound like a broken record about this but: The end of December is no more a valid time to do things to raise the quality of your life than ANY OTHER TIME OF YEAR. And don't give me that tradition crap, doing things simply because that's how they've been done in the past is a special kind of simple that should require the use of helmets.

The Catholic Church, over its long and prestigious career, has established forms of behavior that some people don't even know they are following. That's not to say all people, but think about the number of people who are in stores the morning after Thanksgiving to shop for the day Christ was born. Now statistically, a large portion of those people are not Christian. Large numbers of those people are in fact either avid believers that there is no God (and therefor no Christ), or are members of a religion that is in fact angered by Christian beliefs. And yet there they are, at 4 a.m., kicking and punching and gouging and trampling to get at that goddamn Elmo.

Church and State may not make the best bedfellows, but the news the day after Thanksgiving is pretty much just a peep show of Capitalism and Christianity jerking each other off.

Also: Halloween. Candy. Costumes. Children expecting handouts. Expensive decorations of a style that can only be described as 'hot topic goth'. Door knockers that say spooky things and speakers blaring 'sounds from the crypt'. Oh, I'm eevil cause I wear spiderweb patterned clothing and coffin earings and crosses. I can't even continue with that train of thought as its causeing blood to trickle from my tearduct. Once again, Thankyou Christians for turning what was an important event to quiet the fears and superstitions of rural europeans into a fucking holiday centered around your obnoxious and patently NOT CUTE children.

Adam got me a Domo-Kun plush. Hojo did not. Therefor, today, PRAISE ADAM!