Saturday, December 16, 2006
(9:25 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Year With No Christmas
Over at Unfogged, I had a stroke of genius. Someone mentioned being miserable and depressed, and thinking of what makes me miserable and depressed, I naturally thought of the solution: cancelling Christmas. This may seem radical, but let's look at the effects of Christmas.First of all, it leads our children into a depraved orgy of consumeristic lust. I recently saw a commercial that showed two children in ecstasy over the undoubtedly shoddy and over-priced product that their parents went deeper into credit card debt to purchase for them, and I was horrified. Children should never be that happy; they'll never learn that way.
Second of all, Christmas invariably makes adults feel inadequate -- no fiancee to bring home for Christmas, nothing non-controversial to talk about at the dinner table, always getting everyone the wrong thing. Even the much-lauded "real spirit of Christmas," far from being an impetus for real-world action, serves only to increase that sense of inadequacy, as one's pathetic attempts to buy a child's love pale in comparison to all the wonderful deeds one could be doing (having a homeless man over for dinner, shovelling a shut-in's driveway, etc.).
So I think that's pretty well established: Christmas is the invention of the antichrist. How do we abolish it, though? The most obvious route would be to begin negotiations with the pope. But Ratzinger is a very clever man, doubtless a tough negotiator -- and besides, we have less than two weeks to pull this off. We need a man of action, a man with quick decision-making skills -- obviously, we need George W. Bush. Although our goal would be to abolish Christmas forever, we could probably tell him it was only for this year, since he has something of a penchant for making open-ended commitments that are sold as easy "in and out" affairs. One might think that it would hurt his poll numbers, but (a) he has nowhere to go but up, and (b) most of the country would probably be secretly relieved if Christmas was abolished.
Yes, you read that right: I'm willing to help Bush's poll numbers if need be. It's that serious a matter. I'm sure you all agree.
