From the Sugar Plum Curmudgeon

Well here we are again at the beginning of the ‘holiday season’ in the USofA. Or as some of us like to call it: ‘the Trifuckta’. In the course of the next six weeks or so we’ll ‘celebrate’ Thanksgiving, Christmas (or Chanukah or Kwanzaa, or all three), and New Years Eve. For most of us, celebrating amounts to spending an inordinate amount of money, time, energy, and resources, our own and the planet’s, trying to demonstrate how much we love and care about our family and friends. These efforts will shove millions of well-meaning and truly caring people into severe debt as well as depression. And in a lemming-like display of mob-mind, several hundreds of us will even die trying to ‘live up’ to the holidays. I don’t know for certain but I’m pretty sure Jesus would not actually applaud this kind of sacrificial behavior, but, hell, I’m not a theologian. Radio, TV and now even much of the internet is already awash in holiday hoopla. Maudlin homilies are being spewed out 24/7 from every department store and ‘family-friendly’ big box retailer; Wal-Mart has already begun to spin out tinkling Christmas ‘music’. All of this is in service of the annual unloading of the tons of useless toys laced with toxic waste and slathered with lead paint that they ordered from China last year in anticipation of spreading a Merry Christmas across the land. Most of them will end up in landfills; maybe they'll bring some cheer to the seagulls and rats. ‘O Come All Ye Faithful!’

Let’s face it: if and when you stop to think about it, isn’t it really rather pathetic, not to say deeply and disturbingly ironic, to SELL each and every one of these occasions. We are pounded relentlessly with brassy, and simple-minded entertainments, some even disguised as ‘news’, that try to cheer us into caring or actually feeling something. But all of these cheesy commercial stunts are nothing more than that. Do the faceless cynical marketing clowns really believe that they can impart actual meaning and substance with crap that positively reeks of greed and faux sentimentality? Are cheap trinkets and God-only-knows-what’s-actually-In-it ‘food’ truly the measure of what we are as a culture? As a community? As a nation? Or even as individuals? We’ve come to a very sorry state indeed.

I am not arguing here that we should return or even try to return to some pre-20th century fantasy of how these holidays were or ought to be celebrated. BTW, all of these fantasies usually come to us via the collective Oz of Hollywood, so they can’t really be trusted anyway. This is not to say, that Oz hasn’t come up with some truly moving and inspirational work, but a little bit goes a long way; the mavens of entertainment tend to flail repeatedly at dead horses. I don’t think TV showing “It’s A Wonderful Life” inter-cut with commercials for Home Depot, Dodge Ram Trucks and Viagra exactly rings any bells, whether you believe in angels or not. The next thing you know, they’ll be showing “A Christmas Carol” together with holiday messages from Prez GWB telling us how much he ‘really cares’ about little children and all those maimed returning Iraq veterans. Wouldn’t that be heart-lifting? It’s certainly been a successful ‘crusade’ so far.

Like most of the holidays in the USofA the big three have been slowly but inexorably transformed from their original roots into BIG FAKE occasions. Now their primary roles are to generate billions of dollars for an empty economic system based almost entirely on excessive consumption. Many, if not most retailers are absolutely dependent on these holidays; in many instances the buying that is generated during these holidays accounts for as much as 25 – 30% of their annual revenue. And it’s not only all about money. Venal and sleezy politicians inevitably seize on these occasions to spew gushings of sentimentality archly designed to promote some religio-political agenda of their own. As for the rest of us: we gobble. Now more than ever we pig out, drink too much and try to forget, as much as we can. Nodding off after the turkey, we try not to listen to the ka-ching ka-ching that goes off every time the furnace clicks on, and lose ourselves in watching young men bash each other silly while chasing an oddly shaped ball around a big lawn. But what the hell, it’s America.

None of these are new and original thoughts, but why do we continue to act like amnesia victims or ADD sufferers? Again and again we seem to forget the true inspiration behind these perfectly legitimate and welcome occasions. They were once treated as opportunities for thoughtful reflection and gratitude, genuine celebration, and honest forethought. Instead they have been mangled into something expensive but tawdry, events nearly as empty of substance as Brittany Spear’s brain. Their collective function is to promote the on-going myths that feed our collective fiction of who and what we are, or, as Joe Bageant accurately labels it, ‘the hologram’. Sure it’s necessary to celebrate, to be happy and act foolishly and laugh and get together with the folks we call family and friends, but, damn it, there is a lot of work to be done. Maybe our holiday occasions can act as an inspiration for dedicating ourselves to a better and more equitable future on this planet for everyone. We need to give that future more than a passing thought. How about a conversation over stuffing and drumsticks?

Be well and support one another!