Friday, December 2, 2005

Peace, joy and happy shopping -- right, Jesus?

I think we better put Mark Morford of the EssEffChron on suicide watch:

I shall not argue for the purity of the holidays, for some sort of utopian Christian notion that it used to be all simple and lovely and beatific and that it has now been horribly corrupted by ruthless commercial interests, because the whole damned holiday has been commercially controlled for the past hundred years, and to suggest otherwise is to suck down one too many $5 Starbucks Eggnog Lattes and don the happy blinders.

And I shall certainly not argue for the sanctity of the idea that Christmas is meant to celebrate the holy and glorious birth of Christ (an iPod-free renegade mystic who was actually born somewhere around July) or the idea that we should all be taking some sort of solace in our national generosity of spirit (a generosity that exists only if you're not, you know, gay or minority or Iraqi or Islamic or mentally ill), nor shall I even defend Christmas as a time of family togetherness, given how, for most people, getting together with family around the holidays is akin to having your fingernails yanked out by a chain saw in an ice storm, naked.

Go read for a little fun and perspective before you get out amongst 'em.

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