Two^Sixteen

Yes, I sound like the Grinch. Is my heart two sizes to small? No. I just hate Christmas.

Now I don’t hate the idea of Christmas, a time of year where relatives and friends can get together and celebrate something. I don’t hate the gift giving, and I must admit children seem to enjoy it. It gives them something to look forward to apart from their birthday and easter (must suck if your birthday is between those two though, as you’d have to wait 9 months for the next gift giving time of year. A good birthday is in August I think.).

I hate the commercialization. I mean it’s all about shopping now. The adverts all want you to go out and spend hours and hours and a lot of money buying the shiniest most ‘must have’ toys of the year. And I hate it. Most people would be happy with a smallish sort of gift, maybe even something you made yourself. But the media makes everyone think they want whatever the top 10 list of gifts are. Traditionally people got oranges, a lot of small fun things (balloon helicopters, bouncy balls, parachute men, anything that can make a noise at 3AM on Christmas day). Now they get disappointed if they don’t get at least 20 presents the size of cars. I know, my cousin is like 7. I see the look in his eyes when the present doesn’t need a crane to carry it in. Other cultures used to give small amulets, bracelets and trinkets.

I hate is how long Christmas goes on for. I first saw Christmas cards in July. I mean… that’s a whole 6 months before the big day. It’s stupid. Admittedly that was just one shop, but it still reminded me that one of the most commercial holidays of the year was still to come. Then around September other stores began to sneak out little bits and hints that Christmas was coming up. Since then it’s snowballed. Then came the Christmas songs on the radio. TWO WEEKS INTO NOVEMBER. There are only a few dozen Christmas songs and we’ll all be bored of “I wish it could be Christmas everyday” and “Dreaming of a White Christmas” before the end of the first week of December. Christmas shouldn’t be spoken about until at least the first of December. No decorations, no adverts, no carols, no mention.

And where did this jolly fat fellow come from? He was never mentioned in the pagan traditions. YES CHRISTMAS IS A PAGAN THING.

I hate that the nice pagan tradition has been bastardized.

First the Roman church hijacked it to ease the rest of Europe into Christianity (as they did with many other things.). We still give ‘yule’ tidings right? Well that’s a left over from the pagan times. Yule is another name for the winter solstice or shortest day, which happens around the 25th of December (well, 21st or 22nd. Except in the southern hemisphere where it’s in June. But no one lived there until the Europeans arrived. The natives don’t count. So that’s why the south never had Christmas until the Europeans arrived).

Where did the tree come from? Jesus wasn’t nailed to a fir was he? Pagan traditions again. They brought a tree into the house to remind them that life would return shortly. I don’t mind decorating a tree. Sometimes they look pretty.

I hate the effect it has on the environment. I’m not a vegetarian or a crazy green freak that makes love to trees. But Christmas is a time of excess. Excess food, excess packaging and excess lights. What a waste. Think of all the paper that’s used for a day then discarded. All the packaging that gets torn apart. All the food that gets thrown away. All the electricity used by the thousands of tiny bright lights. Most aren’t even tasteful. They are these monstrosities that depict Santa breaking into peoples homes or badly parking his sleigh on top of a garage. I’ve no problem with several hundred white or coloured lights, or light tubes or anything like that. I myself will decorate the front room for the sake of tradition. But those horrific things that decorate the fronts of some

So there you have it. Some of the reasons I hate Christmas.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.