Holiday Harangue

By Robert Churchwell

Copy Editor

ell, the month of December has come, and in the civilized (that is, the marketable, currency-holding demographic) parts of the world, that means one big thing: the holiday season. The Christmas season had started a long, long time ago, in a culture far, far away and has slowly expanded, enveloping other cultures with its capitalistic enthusiasm. Kwanza and the previously less-important, Chanakuh, have joined the previously less-important Christmas to celebrate the winter solstice.

Not that I'm complaining. I still love getting presents, and for the first couple of years I truly was happy to see Clarence, the angel, save George Bailey from his watery doom. But it seems to me that the whole thing has gotten, to put it existentially, absurd. I mean, sure, I love seeing the Grinch loot Whoville, but Dr. Seuss could make any holiday fun. My problem lies in having to string those huge, really easily shatterable 50's-style Christmas lights on my uncle's tree the day after Thanksgiving. As I stood there on the "do-not-step" step of the ladder, broom in one hand, beer in the other, I thought to myself, "wow, I'm doing a shitty job." But I also thought to myself, "Why, in the almighty dollar's name, does this mania start so damn early?"

The answer lies of course, in The Man. As far as I can tell, one day The Man got up and said to himself, "I want more money. I think I'll start a commercialized holiday that will last from Thanksgiving to the end of the 30-day return policy, just in time for taxes. Then I'll oppress the little people some more." This reportedly, is also how Ticketmaster was started.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to fill Seven-Eleven to maximum capacity on December 24, buying Slurpees and sour gummy-worms for the people we forgot to shop for. We don't have to dig up obscure holidays to keep our children from growing up embittered by jealousy. We can put one over on The Man!

How, you ask? How do we fight this economic bulwark known as the holiday season? Well, I don't know. Quite frankly I still want presents. But someone, some hero, can put an end to this insanity, this calamity, this flim-flammity. And who might this be? Who has this force? Why no one else but the Grinch could, of course.

And I think that's a good place to stop. Good night, folks.