Excerpts from The Journals Of A
21st Century Schizoid Man
Thanksgiving—the
Christmas season begins
Everyone knows that Thanksgiving precedes Christmas. It
comes almost a month before Christmas and the day following is the beginning of
the Christmas Season. That means Christmas decorations and the shopping season
begins—at least for the general public. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, such
as Jews, Moslems and some atheists.
Many of us more enlightened people wouldn’t celebrate
Thanksgiving at all if we didn’t have a lot of families with all their
traditions. In the real Thanksgiving story, Indians help out starving Pilgrims
during their first winter in the new world. Next comes a huge feast in which
the Indians and the Pilgrims celebrate together with three days of feasting and
games. After that, the Pilgrims, and all white folks to precede them, come and
take over the Indian’s land, just assuming they won’t need it for anything,
because they are just savages.
That
leads to the Indians wars and many of us just don’t like celebrating a holiday
in which we planned to wipe out a people and their culture after they were so
much help to us.
Still,
there are parents, grandparents and other relatives who will fix elaborate
dinners for the entire family and we all sit together, talk about how much we
are grateful for, then for many there is a prayers. Many of us don’t want to be
the buzz-kill who comes home and chastises his/her relatives for celebrating
the slaughter of Indians, the worship of deities we don’t really believe in, or
insult the host for serving us a dead animal. So I went to my Niece Kelly’
home, where she took over this duty from my mother, who died a few years ago.
My niece is a tall, thin blond woman with three kids and I took part in her
feast to keep the peace in the family. I drove out to their middle-class wooden
yellow house on the west end of town, came in and ate turkey, mash potatoes,
sweet potatoes and enough pies to fill a warehouse. In past years I always
brought a good wine, maybe Chianti, to share. Now most of my relatives don’t
drink and they all know I’ve had hepatitis, so to ease their fears, I don’t
even bring real booze.
Then after the meal comes the onslaught of a newer
holiday—Black Friday. That is the official Christmas buying rush and that is
when the real holiday season begins. And that is what is really important to
our society’s retailers, because Christmas presents bring in a lot more money
than what is spent on Thanksgiving dinner. So while some of my relatives were
planning to get up at 4am to shop for all those great buys, I returned home
where I could watch my TV and allow all that food to digest.
When I got in the house, I sat back in my leather chair,
clicked on my large TV and got ready to watch a night of mindless TV. The first
channel I came to was some cheap imitation of “American Idol,” where people who
can sing and dance, yet have no imagination of their own and over all have
nothing to really say, compete for some meaningless title that will hopefully
be forgotten, along with the contestant, in just a few short years.
This Black Friday would be different from years past. It
wasn’t enough that people lined up on Thanksgiving night and wait for the
“Black Friday” sales. That happens every year and many people such as I just
ignore it. This year was way different. The corporate masters of our country
decided we needed a whole week of Black Friday sales, to really pull in the
money. A few retailers, including Wal*Mart, decided to make their employees
come in on Thanksgiving night, to open early to make a few extra sales. There
were complaints across the country, by both Wal*Mart workers and people who
sympathized with them. The move was unnecessary and it ruined the Thanksgiving
holiday for the employees. But as usual—Wal*Mart just didn’t care.
So as I watched TV I was hoping to hear that “A Charlie
Brown Christmas” and “How the
Grinch Stole Christmas!” would be scheduled in the coming weeks.
After all, it was that time of the season and they showed these TV shows pretty
much every year. Both of those cartoons
were critical of the commercialism of the holiday season and focused on other
important aspects of the holidays. I suppose that is why I liked those shows so
much. There were other Christmas specials, but those two, plus the movie Scrooged,
1988 and Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (which the TV stations
rarely showed anymore), were my favorites. These messages that “Christmas
doesn’t come out of a package or store” does little to affect the crass
commercialism that is thrown at us over and over on TV commercials.
This year I wasn’t
noticing any air play for any of those classic Christmas specials. And I wasn’t
noticing much in the way of Santa, Elves, green holly or anything to do with
Christmas. It seemed as if all I saw where people buying for their shopping
lists. I did see Santa selling cars in a suite.
Never in my entire life have I ever seen the kind of Crass
Commercialism that had plagued these so called “holiday seasons.” Commercial
after commercial showed greedy-self-absorbed people bragging about the money
they saved on smart phones, iphones, TVs and Cars. Crass commercialism and
selling seemed to completely replace the decorations and hints that this
holiday was anything more than an opportunity to buy a lot of stuff.
After a while, “Night-Time” came on, as usual, right after
our local news station. I used to watch that news show all the time. It was
often biased, but at least it had news. In the last few years, that same show
got away from real news and stared to covers such crap as “Dancing With The Stars.” It’s almost always about
celebrities. There are wars going on in
such places as Syria. But don’t watch “Night-Time” for that. There are
important questions in people’s minds such who’s getting voted of “Dancing With
The Stars?” So after a while, I quit watching the show all together.
But tonight, I was hoping to get a break
from all the commercialism and Black Friday hype, so I watched it anyway. And I
was disappointed as usual. This week it was an in-depth interview with Justin Bieber. I should have known.
After a while I got tired of TV and went to my computer
room. I decided it was time to check on my Facebook account and e-mail. Even
here I could not get away from all the crap that this commercial Christmas was
throwing at me;
“Zuuzs,con; It's Cold/Flu Season So Stock Up! - Up To 40% Off Cold Remedies.
Other messages from similar companies; 12 Days of Joy - Special Holiday Surprise Every Day For 12 Days;
Stock Up & Save - Full Price Legwear: Buy ONE get ONE 50% off; Save On Holiday Gifts - 20% Off $60; Shop Holiday Gifts On The Cheap - Great Picks Starting at $5; Cyber Savings All Week - Special Offers On Top Brands & Products;
Art.com, Great Holiday Gift Ideas - 20% off all orders; Naturalizer, Save On Holiday Gifts - 10% Off Your Entire Order; Radioshack, Capture
The Memories! - Up To $80 Off Nikon Cameras…”
This
was all crap which I had no intention of ever buying and I had no interest in
even hearing about it. And yet it came to my computer un-invited.
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