I recently had a conversation with my girlfriend and her mother about Christmas. They were on the typical side of “Christmas is amazing, woohoo” etc. I, on the other hand, was on the rarer side opposing Christmas and everything it stands for.
Well, what it stands for these days anyway. Few people seem to remember that Christmas is, historically, a celebration of the birth of Christ. Wait, not historically, what’s the word… mythologically, that’s it! It was made up in medieval times to celebrate the (incorrectly dated) birth of a man made up a thousand years before. But that isn’t what Christmas stands for anymore, not in the slightest. Christmas now stands for three things that make me hate it so.
1) Commercialisation. Don’t get me started on this, it’s a well-rehearsed speech from many, if not all, anti-Christmas folk like me. Constant adverts screaming “BUY OUR STUFF, IT’S CHRISTMAS!”; television executives agreeing “We want good ratings, let’s make a Christmas special out of EVERYTHING!”; children writing down lists and lists of everything they could possibly want and nothing they could possibly need, selfishly disregarding anybody else. The examples are endless, it’s a time where everyone can be at their greediest and nobody else bats an eyelid. How ironic that this is called the time of “giving”. Obviously there is a lot of giving involved, people passing presents on to each other and getting an ego boost and sense of self-satisfaction from it. But let’s not forget that the process of buying these gifts, Christmas shopping, is almost universally abhorred. People hate Christmas shopping, thus they hate buying gifts for people. Ergo, they hate giving. It’s the one commercial thing about Christmas that isn’t selfish or greedy and, what do you know, everyone hates it.
2) Falsehood. Everyone pretends to be happy because we’re told this whole ‘holiday’ is a happy time. Everyone takes time off from being horrible to each other over in order to be nice instead. Take Christmas 1914; after weeks of ripping each other apart by machine guns and shells, the English and German forces had a ceasefire on Christmas Day to play a football match. And then the very next day they went back to slaughtering each other. Yeah, what a wonderful time of year. People always act all nice and happy with each other during this period, calling it “Christmas spirit”, then when Christmas is over and they start being awful to each other again, they complain about how they wish it was Christmas. Heads up, guys. Perhaps if you took the time out from all the suing, mugging, stealing, firing, attacking, shouting, slandering, bitching and moaning, you’d realise that Christmas is celebrated because everyone is nice to each other. So if you stop being such tools and instead treat everyone like human beings 365 days a year, you’d realise it wasn’t such a special occasion.
3) Excuses. Seriously, this is what annoys me the most about Christmas; everyone uses it as an excuse to do things. “Hey, I’m going to go out with my friends tonight because it’s Christmas”; “Let’s get the whole family together because it’s Christmas”; “I think we should go and do something fun because it’s Christmas”. Stop it now. You don’t need an excuse to enjoy your lives, for God’s sake. If you want to go out with your friends, do it. If you really wanted to spend time with your family, you wouldn’t only do it once a year; you’d do it as often as you could. If you fancy doing something fun that’s readily available all year round, then do it, don’t put it off until the busiest time of year just because you feel it’s your obligation to have a miserable life for 11 months just for a few moments of enjoyment all squeezed into December. Just get out there and enjoy your life, you don’t need a stale, twee, medieval festival to govern how you act. So stop all this saccharine “we must all be together because it’s Christmas!” nonsense and just get out there and do things when you want to do them. What’s your excuse? “Oh, I can’t, I have work all week!” What, the work you spend all year doing just so you can throw all your money away on Christmas at the end of it? “I’m too busy, what with the kids and the housework and everything.” Children are children all year. In fact, they’re even worse during Christmas. And housework ALWAYS needs doing, especially if you have to cook and clean up for a load of family members you invited round for Christmas dinner because you just couldn’t be bothered seeing them at any other time of year.
So there, that’s why I hate Christmas. People always say religion is stale and we should just get rid of it and move on, but once someone mentions Christmas, people turn into idiots and start romanticising about this terrible time of year. It’s not even in a good month, it’s in the backside of the calendar. Constantly cold, always raining but never snowing, ice covering the pavements and roads, making walking and driving very hazardous experiences, it’s a horrible time of year. Things would be better if December didn’t even exist. That way we wouldn’t have to endure New Year’s Eve either, another excuse-ridden, greetings-card-manufactured celebration. Why need an excuse to have a party? Just have one already. So the number of the year has gone up by one? Big deal. The number of the day goes up everyday, but you don’t see people going “OH MY GOD IT’S NEW JUNE DAY, LET’S HAVE A PARTY!” They just say, “Oh, it’s the first of June. Whoop-de-doo.”
So stop acting like Christmas is some magical time of year; happiness can’t be forced, family can’t be avoided, reindeer can’t fly, and, above all, Santa Claus doesn’t exist. And neither did Jesus. So grow up already.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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