Autocrats & Oxymorons

This is a little late, but hey, I'm still mad!

Here in the Southwest, home to morons of many persuasions, there's a little ritual that comes along as the days get shorter and the heat dissipates. It's called "The Holiday Season" and it starts as early as Halloween.

In olden days (in Europe), Halloween was traditionally the end of the old year, well into harvest time and the beginning of wintry weather. Now, in America, it seems that some people take it as license to start hanging Christmas decorations. I know a family that actually puts up several multi-theme Christmas trees in their house around that time.

Is Thanksgiving so unimportant now that we should skip right over it to get to "the good stuff?" I guess in 21st Century America, it's better to receive than give, and with people worrying about diets, they don't get that much on Thanksgiving. Oh, wait a minute! Didn't there used to be something about counting your blessings, appreciating what you had, giving to others who didn't have, and generally giving thanks on this day way back in the 20th Century somewhere?

And since when did December get its name changed to "Christmas Month?" If they're not stringing lights sometime in November, the Friday after Thanksgiving is de rigeur. The turkey is barely in Tupperware, and inflatable nutcracker soldiers are out on people's lawns. Christmas trees go up and Christmas music issues forth from every radio station, CD player and iPod.

Now, I like Chrismas music (mostly the traditional, Church-like stuff), but how many versions of "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Walking In A Winter Wonderland" can you hear before you're up on the roof with the rifle behind the Santa and reindeer silhouette, taking potshots at Jehovah's Witnesses?

Tell ya what: why don't you string a few thousand less lights this year, to help get us off dependence on foreign oil and keep the oil companies out of Alaskan wildlife refuges? Plus, it might be a good thing to think less about your own upcoming loot and focus on those who have less. There are plenty people all around you who have trouble making payments, providing food, and paying heating bills. Not to mention those who have actually lost jobs (two in my family have, for example). Merry Christmas!

I have a Christmas wish: that Americans will change their consumer ways (slightly) and celebrate holidays like they did before 1960 or so. The meaning of the holidays were so much more important back then. Less materialism, more spirituality.

Of course, back then, there were people who complained about the very same thing, and back before that, to the beginning of communication.

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. -- Mark Twain