The Weekly Sneak: Not A White Christmas, For Christ's Sake

Warning: serious grinchiness about to happen. If you're a Holiday Cheer Nazi, please more right along to happyland elsewhere. Unwarning.

It's not a complete abdication of joy yet: there are parts of my cold, cold heart that thaw slightly at the prospect of holiday feasting. And only an absolute ghoul wouldn't enjoy the wonderment and energy that many children invest in the Christmas season before they realize that Santa doesn't exist*. Other than that, the best thing that I can rouse myself to say about Christmas is that it marks the big yearly slow-down before the hectic energy of a new year. 

For reasons that will remain undisclosed, late December brings with it a pretty dark philosophical mood for me. I have come to appreciate the other members of the Grumpy About Christmas Club for their level heads and cool temperaments and sentiment-free conversation during these treacly times. This year since I'm feeling particularly feral, Jim Reeves and his crooning about a (are you (*&^* kidding me! In Dar!) White Christmas have been more vexatious than normal. It just seems to condense everything that wrong about the life unexamined:

"Jim Reeves and reindeer are a great metaphor for some of the contradictions in our chosen process of modernization. If one-horse open sleighs are exotic in the countries where they used to work in the first place, can you imagine just how much further a Bongolander living below the equator must travel in their imagination to grasp the experience of dashing through the snow? But we dutifully pay our respects to these rituals nonetheless. Are we so keen on reproducing standardized measures of success that we don't spend too much time asking the awkward but necessary questions? Where might this habit of emulation take us, eventually?"

For extra fun, I managed to work in the phenomenon of public shootings that's kicking the stuffing out of America at present. Oh, I could go on but it would end up with an examination of Christianity and everything that's wrong with religion. Which isn't a fight I want to have here and now- I am saving my venom for the first smug (expletive deleted) who pisses me off over a chicken pilau dinner.

Happy (clear your throat) Holidays, comrades. Keep it real. A Lutta Effing Continua.

*And ain't that just a bitch. Welcome to crises of faith, kids. :)