The holidays are upon us once again. I think that means Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. I'm not sure how Kwanza and Hanukah fit into that. Sometimes Hanukah happens before anyone even mentions the holidays. As for Kwanza, well to be honest I didn't even know it existed prior to my late teens or early twenties, so I don't think it makes the cut as one of the referenced holidays. So for my purposes I will not speak to Hanukah or Kwanza.
So for the first of the Holidays we have Thanksgiving. Great, awesome. Everyone’s thankful for what they have. Family, homes, food, fat American asses, and Indian casinos. So thank you early American settlers for not being able to maintain any semblance of civility with the native peoples here and began the systematic destruction of their language culture and history. If they had just known what god was and understood European customs before Europeans got here everything would be fine. And the land that was taken ended up getting deforested, over farmed, strip mined, or polluted. And most of the native wildlife was shot into extinction or near extinction. I'm not apologizing. Shit, my ancestors were trying to dig potatoes out of the dirt on an island in the north Atlantic, I'm just saying let’s remember our country wasn't founded without anyone gettin their hands dirty.
Am I thankful for my family, and my home, and my well-fed fat American ass? Hell yes I am. But I am everyday. Let's face it most of us on Thanksgiving are thankful for a friggin day off from our shitty thankless jobs, and guilt free allowance to eat until we pass out watching a crappy football game. And when you wake up? Desert!
Christmas.....goddamn Christmas. Ok let’s lay it out here. We know this has to do with Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus in a barn. We know that coincidentally several pagan holidays were already occurring at this time of year log before Christianity. We know that it was a common practice of the early Christian church to adopt pagan holidays as their own to help convert them. So for the sake of time let’s jump to the conclusion of this annoying and ridiculous argument and say that this is a pagan holiday that early Christians adopted into their new belief systems. To simplify, there is nothing about cutting down a fucking evergreen tree, propping it up in your living room, decorating it with shiny balls and lights, and staying up until 3 a.m. so you can stuff toys under the tree so your kids will think some fat dude in a red suit broke in to leave them there, has nothing, NOTHING to do with Jesus.
Atheists, listen....I'm one of you. But get over it. The holiday is called Christmas. It's just what it's called. Deal with it. No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to go to a Christmas Eve mass thing with the Catholics. It's ok to call it Christmas, no one is going to think your gunning for the papacy. So lighten up. Calling it Holliday or saying Happy Holidays just for Christmas is stupid. It is not offensive.... it is the name of a holiday. The name happens to be Christmas. Live a little put on that reindeer sweater with the blinking Rudolph nose and enjoy it.
New Years. Kinda don't get this one. I mean who picked this? I end up having to work on New Year’s Eve so the odds of me staying awake until midnight are zero. It lasts for like one second anyway. And then what? Who started counting anyway? How do we even know it's the right number? And it’s based on Jesus. That seems kind of arbitrary to me. I'm pretty sure this holiday just gets credit for being among "the" holidays because of its timing. If it was in April no one would give a crap about it. Basically after all the food, gifts, family, and debt people just need a reason to either drink or sleep...... heavily.
So Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, or enjoy whatever the hell else is it is you do at this time of year.
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