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Capitalizing on the holiday spirit
It seems as though the Americanized, retail Christmas is upon us again. Halloween squiggled its way past on calendars across the world, and that means the consumer and advertiser madness has started. The snowflakes, the trees, the whites and reds, the greens, the ornaments, the symbolic nutcrackers and the lights, oh my, the lights. On the trees in the city and on the buildings in the country, around windows -- decorating our lives. Incidentally, many scholars will tell you that Jesus was born sometime in the summer of 6 B.C. There was some date shifting about his actual birthday -- something about Catholicism and heathen calendars, something about group membership. Now there is Christmas techno music in the Gap, Christmas.com and credit cards swimming in the love that is expected by the average TV-watching family. Now there is overtime pay for retail workers during shopping season, the stress of driving on Christmas-clogged streets and Christmas tree "farming." Holy moly. In my quasi-adult life, the American Christmas experience is the weirdest, most backward institution that I have to live through on an annual basis. I make it a point to buy people gifts all year long and then on Christmas I buy them a book, just to go through the motions. I just don't understand how all of the retail hype has anything to do with God. And the average retailer even dismisses Thanksgiving as "unimportant," often overlooking the possibility of turkey and pilgrim sales. (Incidentally, other scholars might tell you that the pilgrims and Native Americans would have been much more likely to have had a seafood feast rather than a turkey). But I suppose all of this is beside the point. Spending is the point. Tax cuts are the point. Condoleezza Rice is the point, for heaven's sake. The driving economy is the point. Outsourcing the menial labor jobs for making stupid Christmas trinkets is the point. But I have a solution to all of this. And this solution -- it's even a common theme among poorly-selling Christmas made-for-TV specials -- just love everybody all the time. So, do your part. Combat the retail Christmas disaster by not buying things. Combat the retail Christmas disaster by avoiding monetary transactions altogether. Buy a Christmas plant instead of a tree that you have to throw away. And remember, don't believe advertisers; they are devils in disguise. They send you subliminal messages that "diamonds are forever," but really, one might more logically determine that most diamonds are actually mined by small children in developing nations. Today, the highly trained, highly specialized, highly creative minds of U.S. money-grubbers are turning the spiritually worthwhile idea of celebrating the birth of Christ into a nightmare of horrible, repeating versions of "Feliz Navidad" and synthetic shortages of retail goods (i.e. Tickle-Me Elmo). Fight the power. Tomorrow must be better. |
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