The Spirit of the Season
By: The Sceptic | 17Dec1998
This is the season of stress and spiritual poverty. This is when traffic conditions debilitate under the load of insanely frantic shoppers. This is the time when advertisements and children oblige parents -- already struggling to make ends meet -- to purchase nonessentials. This is the month when people insist others express happiness they cannot experience. This is when human loneliness becomes so reinforced by rampant imagery of good-natured social contact, suicide skyrockets. [After publishing this, it has been pointed out by a guestbook respondent that this may be an urban legend. Will you settle for Christmas tree fires?] In previous years, in various venues, often in many words, I have written a holiday message -- my annual attempt to express the reasons I am unable to share the same "holiday spirit" that nearly everyone in the Western world is mysteriously afflicted with during December. This time, I will not address the possibly absurd association between the birth of Jesus and that much older holiday celebrated on or near the winter solstice.
...I've put this together for you.
- If you believe "peace on earth" is achieved by massive consumerism for the benefit of those who are already reasonably well off,
- If you believe that the "spirit of giving" is a swap meet, where your contribution should be of equal value or better, in order to stay on everybody's lists,
- If you think the real message in Dickens' A Christmas Carol was the importance of celebrating a religious holiday, rather than the necessity of addressing poverty in one's own environment,
- If you assume every person who does not believe this to be the "most wonderful time of year" is just a cold-hearted bastard,
