Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiv - never mind, string up the lights

The worst of the holiday season (defined as 'whenever the sales start') is no longer the corporate push to extend Christmas spending. Forget that the image of Santa Claus is a century-old Coca-Cola ad. Ignore all the stores already pushing 'must-have' gifts on you. I guarantee you by the way that your child will not die without the latest Tickle-Me-Beanie-Furbie that all the other kids have.

No, the true sign that the holiday traditionalist Waterloo has come and gone is that on November 17th, the house down the street acquired a full set of Christmas decorations, complete with fiberglass does with plastic reindeer antlers glued on their lovable little heads. I'm half-expecting an army of turkeys to march down the street and have it out with their holiday's invaders a la West Side Story. No, i don't know how they'd manage the finger-snapping.

My point is that it's Joe Schmoe who's now skipping right over one holiday to get to the one a month from now. A month? A month is huge. At the time these celebrations originated, you could've died to cold, starvation and bloodthirsty invaders five times over in a month. The stores' interest in extending the gift-buying holiday at any expense is well documented and has a certain internal logic. We're talking about corporations; their behavior always follows the amoebic slide toward food, or in this case, profit.

No, the sick effect is the brainwashed average duh-merican stringing up Christmas lights with a turkey leg still in his mouth. Thanksgiving was your holiday you geniuses. All the others were Germanic or Jewish or perversions of druidic seasonal rites. Taking the harvest celebration which is fairly generic in most cultures and making it a day of remembrance for the struggles of the early colonists and the one moment of cooperation with the natives before they butche -

Ooooohhh, now i get it. Thankgiving's not safe for children. Better show them a nice, cuddly baby Jesus instead.

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