Well, here it is again; Christmas. Lights, decorations, presents, general contentment, commercialization, money, that big oaf Santa who ruined my 5th grade Christmas, oh, you do have to love the holidays. Now, I just want to get something straight here, just for my own peace of mind. Originally, wasn't Christmas started because that nice man was born? See, I just don't get how we went from Jesus, to presents, the trees, to decorations.... I mean, did I miss something? For one thing, why are we celebrating the birth of Jesus with Christmas? We don't give presents to him, we give presents to our family members, classmates, people who we don't really like but they give you things so you feel guilty if you don't, we're not giving anything to Jesus. If anything, isn't the philosophy (somewhere out there) kind of like, yeah, we're alive, we're all here, happy birthday Christian, etc. world! Isn't it more the fact that we're all born and alive for another year, or is that just me?
Okay, here's another question, was Jesus tacky? I'll bet anything that if he came back right now and saw my neighbors yard, he would throw up. Who wants to wake up in the morning to blinking wise men standing next to a camel? Come on people, have a little dignity. What's even funnier about that yard, is that in the same yard where a woman's giving birth, Santa is standing over reindeer! Ah what? Clashing of the cultures here, people. (My brother and I were going to put up a huge penticle in our window, but we couldn't find one. Darn.)
Now, I'm not even going to talk about the constant Christmas specials, but Hollywood really is out-doing themselves on The Grinch. I was under the impression that the whole theory of the Grinch is the fact that Christmas is not about giving presents or commercialization. What? Now, where does that come into play with the thousands of Grinch merchandise stalking me? What happened to the point of the book? I'm guess I'm just not getting the whole reasoning behind Grinch lunch boxes, but really, the new Grinch movie is just proving the point of the story. I wonder if they did that on purpose? Ha.
All right, now don't get me too wrong, Christmas is a swell holiday, we get vacation, that's always fun, but what is it about this time of year that makes it twice as busy as everything else? In like three days I went from an orchestra concert, to ushering at a choir, to a school concert! There's nothing wrong with being busy, it's just being busy and watching everyone try to be equal in each of the holidays, though I have never heard any Kwanza songs. (That's okay, it's a made up holiday, anyway.) It's really amusing, I love how the "no religion in schools works." (The government won't allow prayer, but yet on every dollar bill it says "In G-d We Trust." Yep, that's not hypocritical or anything.) So, most schools won't allow any songs about Jesus, (except for mine, our chorus teacher is from the deep south and doesn't seem to care), but they always work to have a diverse holiday concert. Lets see, in band we played Voodoo Dance, Jingle Bones, and Creepy Crawlers, and in chorus we sang N'Sync, (you have no idea how proud that made me), Yo Yisa Goy (a Hebrew song which is incidentally about war), and this Christmas thingy. It's amusing, really it is, especially when the high school chorus sang about the big J.C. for like twelve songs, and then The Grinch. The holiday spirit is flowing through my veins.
The funny thing is that although holidays are fun and you get to skip school , none of them are any better! Look at it, Christmas is when Jesus was born, Easter is when he rose from the dead? Sorry to say, but that's kind of nasty, do you really want children to celebrate a corpse rising from the grave? That's not to say that other holidays are, uh, interesting too. Jeez, there are so many Jewish holidays I could take a day off and claim it to be religious, when I don't even know the name! Passover, good food, my family is pretty amusing at it, but for one thing, it's depressing, and another thing, why do they need to confirm the fact like twelve times that they are the "chosen people"? My family went to a community seder one year, and I thought it was okay then, but this rabbi was basically saying, "yah, so this sucked, we got killed, that was bad, but it's all okay because that's the way G-d wanted it." Yah, I'm sure that's it. Just keep tellin' yourself that buddy.
Any hoo, that's my holiday rant, although I'm not sure why I'm disputing presents. Useless crap givin to you by relatives who have seen you once in the last eight years, that is where the real wonders lie.
Merry Christmas everybody.