 "Photo: MCT Campus")
It's that time of year again. When the shopkeepers groan, the mom and dads moan, and the kids scream their little lungs out for you to comply with their demands. It's Christmas. The time of the year that has ranged in so many meanings that it seems like people just make their own stuff up as they go. Over the years, traditions included crying, yelling, apologizing, and probably falling over dead drunk after making a regrettable mistake with your friend's girlfriend. But there are the good things in Christmas as well. Getting that gift you've been anxiously awaiting for a whole two weeks because you knew this was the only time you could get someone else to buy it for you. That awesome Christmas party at your job where you gathered up enough courage to talk to the secretary after a few too many eggnogs, maybe you rest your hand on her shoulder and use the other to hold up a plastic mistletoe that you procured at Target. And maybe if you're very lucky, you see that look of happiness on your children's face when they open that wrapped rectangle box and discover the object of their material affection. Isn’t life grand?
My family and I used to celebrate Christmas. Back when I was younger, I remember my father bought a tree that I helped to decorate; he hung up the lights, and all that other good stuff. After not getting the ridiculous thing I wanted that year, I knew Santa Claus was fake. The disappointment soon past and was then replaced with a complacency of the holiday. We hadn't bought a tree again after that; perhaps the last time being when I was 9 or so. I soon learned to hate many things about Christmas.
The lines in stores, the fake cheer people put on, the expectations on you to provide you and yours with the one gift that they deserve (at least that year), and perhaps, the worst of them all, the gargantuan newspaper you get with all the ads that you may find two or three you may use after sifting through about seven million, and the cycle continues every year. What a crock.
For a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, people sure do show it in a rather strange way, what with the sales, the constant red and green shoved into my retinas, and about ten thousand shows dedicated to the events leading up to that single day that a baby who was the son of God was immaculately conceived by a lowly girl named Mary. OK...I guess I can get behind that, but what's the deal with the fat guy in the red suit with this list of EVERY single kid in the world? Also, can someone please explain to me why there's a rabbit hiding painted eggs when Jesus is resurrected?
I'm not entirely against Christmas, there are still some things I enjoy: the eggnog, the mall Santa, hot girls in Santa hats, and of course, receiving a gift I probably didn't deserve after doing many reprehensible things during the year. If anything, I do enjoy the one thing Christmas promotes for sure, if nothing else: Togetherness. And if there's one thing that illustrates this and other points better than I can, it's A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Now, I'm not biased because I think I'm Charlie Brown or something, but because it's a bunch of kids who are figuring all this out. When the adults are yelling at each other over stupidity, the kids with the abnormally sized heads thought to themselves, “Christmas is about being together and not about commercialization or what we buy or give. Also, this Christmas tree needs a makeover.”
It sucks the big one that most people never really see the meaning in Christmas until it's spoon-fed to them after watching something on TV. The 24-Hour “Christmas Story” marathons, a random showing of “It’s A Wonderful Life”, hell, even “Scrooged”, people are oblivious to Christmas' true meaning.
I tend to look at it as a day where one should be selfless. Do something for someone else, and in this case, it really is for Christ's sake. For a day we that we celebrate the birth of the son of God, why do we end up buying a tree that sits in our living room, cover it in tinsel and ornaments, and wait for it to rot? I guess it's supposed to be a weird allegory about the death and rebirth of Jesus.
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