Merry Crapmas

                I’m so torn on Christmas.  It’s so good and so bad.  It brings out the best in people: feeding the hungry, anonymously clothing the naked or, more likely, reclothing the poorly clothed.  And it brings out throngs of harried shoppers literally stomping on people’s heads to buy a video game where you shoot Iraqis. 

                This isn't an anti-capitalism rant.  It’s not a “meaning of the season” rant.  It’s not even a let’s just try and shop without killing people rant.  I’m just a little conflicted about it all.  I don’t think that I’m alone.  I just have a few random observations:

 1---Men get the shaft on presents.   Kids get cool presents.  Wives get beautiful gifts.  Men get power tools.  What?  So, let me get this straight: the kids get toys that will teach them math, reading and occupy their play time for hours, she gets jewelry that will enhance her self-image and make her feel special and he gets an electric sander?  Adult men get Christmas presents that will make them do more work.  Once they come home from work, they get to “play” with their present by doing more work.  I know that stores and wives view (and market) these things as basically adult male toys, but why not an adult sized Millennium Falcon?  I want to ride in the Batmobile.  I don’t want to have to build it. 

 2---Guilt is just as much a part of the season as eggnog.  It’s just as gross as eggnog.  Well, maybe not.  Eggnog sets a pretty high bar for disgustitude.  But, damn, does every single charity in the world have to send out their year-end contribution plea in December?  Again, I get the idea behind it.  If people are feeling charitable now, let’s use this to make a better world.  But, come on.  Vary the mailing date up a little.  Please.  And, is it just me, or is it always the same shoeless African kid on the “Feed the Children” pleas?  Giving money to poor African children is noble and good, but what if that were your cousin?  Would you want to see your cousin portrayed like some Dickensian child labor advocate?  If I were Liberian or Ugandan, I think this annual picture of my country as the worst place on Earth, the place that makes rich Americans feel bad about their relative wealth, would piss me off. 

 3---Can we please set some sort of present limit?  This may hurt our national bottom line, but damn, how many presents does a kid need to unwrap on Christmas morning?  We’re turning our children into Veruca Salt and we seem to be okay with that.  First there was the wooden shoe, then came the sock-length stocking, then the Godzilla-sock-length stocking, then came the Christmas tree, and now we have the suburban present sprawl semi-circle of avarice.  That’s the charted path of kids’ presents.  And yes, it’s a beautiful thing to watch the little ones’ glee on Christmas morning, but since they usually enjoy playing with the box as much as they do the actual present, why not just fill half the boxes and make it a game?  That would provide us with even more voyeuristic enjoyment.  The kids would still get to open the same number of “presents.”  And it would be a hell of a lot cheaper.

 4---What is the psychological make-up that leads a guy to becoming a mall Santa?  Unlike my normal modus operandi, I’m not going to answer my own question.  I’m just curious.  You can’t ask the mall Santa what factors led him to don the beard and the cape.  He’s not going to break character.  He’s just going to nod at the security guard and you’ll get rushed out and banned from the food court.  If anyone knows the answer to this one, please, tell me. 

                 Everybody celebrates Christmas anyway.  The right-wing radio nuts who insist every year that there’s a War on Christmas because they happened to see a menorah in a store window are WRONG.  There’s no War on Christmas.  If there were a war, there’d be more casualties than the occasional shopper stomping.   

                 I've got a lot more Christmas observations, but I’m really trying to keep these blogs brief.  We’ve all got the attention spans of children today, so I’ll just say “Merry Christmas to all.”