The strangest and saddest thing about it was that the characters never really stopped to ask themselves why. Why do people go crazy preserving traditions that don't serve any purpose other than making people miserable? Why do we act like animals every December? What does it all mean?
The answer is nothing. So much of we do at Christmas means nothing, I realized when I asked myself these questions this year. It's as if celebrating the birth of Jesus, being thankful, and reconnecting with the spiritual side of life wasn't enough (correction: wasn't profitable enough), so we threw in a bunch of other pointless crap that didn't need to be there. This was the first Christmas in my 22 years that the pointlessness of said crap truly showed its ugly self. I got sick of all the overplayed holiday songs, including "The Christmas Waltz":
"Santa's on his way/He's filled his sleigh/With things, things for you and for me..."
The emphasis on "things" made me nauseous. Not even Frank Sinatra could make me ignore it. And don't get me started on "The Chipmunk Song":
"Christmas, Christmastime is here/Time for toys and time for cheer
We've been good, but we can't last/Hurry Christmas, hurry fast..."
No, it wasn't the Chipmunks' squeaky voices that made me want to punch my radio. It was the fact that they based their moral decisions on the promise of material gain. I always knew chipmunks were the greediest of rodents, the way they stuff their faces.
It wasn't just the music, either. I never liked the mawkish milquetoast that passes for Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, but this year I hated them more than usual. They seemed like the cinematic equivalent of Pop Tarts: flat, identical pieces of cardboard dropping off an assembly line, wrapped up in shiny advertisements. I couldn't stand the way they oversimplified life, how they made it look so easy for people to change or always do the right thing, how everybody was white. They made the complications and difficulty of real life all the more apparent.
Advertisements were also worse this year. One night, I watched another movie that was taped in 1998, when I was seven years old. The 90s commercials were so much less obnoxious than today's, and there seemed to be fewer of them. They were short, sweet, and to the point. They simply said "please buy our product; it works," instead of screeching "BUY THIS STUFF AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF" over loud dance-pop jingles and equally loud graphics. I literally teared up when I saw an old commercial for a Gameboy Color. Aside from this year's ads themselves was the fact that Black Friday tried to bleed into Thanksgiving Day. My friend called Black Friday a "blight upon humanity," but it's more like a suspension of humanity. For one brief moment, people feel it's okay to claw someone's face over a printer (that actually happened to someone).
Even some of the things I normally enjoyed about Christmas lost some of their luster in 2013. I didn't feel like building a gingerbread house, and the mall decorations didn't sparkle quite as much as before. An exception was the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which I enjoyed more than ever, probably because I felt like Charlie Brown. I didn't feel the way I was supposed to feel. Sometimes I could even hear smooth jazz playing when I vented about my problems. I needed a Linus to remind me of what Christmas was all about.
My Linus came in the form of small moments of kindness, joy, and forgiveness. The light in a friend's eyes when they receive an unexpected present (granted, it's easy to light up most people's eyes with free booze, but still). The discovery that another friend isn't angry with you, even when you thought you wronged them and felt soul-crushingly guilty for it. The feeling of slipping a bill through the slot in a Salvation Army bucket. And, finally, hearing Silent Night sung over a guitar, the simple sound embracing a Christmas Eve congregation, faces softened in candlelight. A silent night. What a beautiful thing.
Basically, I didn't find joy in the typical things this Christmas, but I did in more spiritual things. The symbolism of Jesus being born in such a simple, threadbare environment, and the ultimate act of forgiveness He would come to represent, stood out more than ever. Overall, I think this temporary depression led to a change for the better, which makes me wonder if my other emotional ups and downs could do the same.
It wasn't just the music, either. I never liked the mawkish milquetoast that passes for Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, but this year I hated them more than usual. They seemed like the cinematic equivalent of Pop Tarts: flat, identical pieces of cardboard dropping off an assembly line, wrapped up in shiny advertisements. I couldn't stand the way they oversimplified life, how they made it look so easy for people to change or always do the right thing, how everybody was white. They made the complications and difficulty of real life all the more apparent.
Advertisements were also worse this year. One night, I watched another movie that was taped in 1998, when I was seven years old. The 90s commercials were so much less obnoxious than today's, and there seemed to be fewer of them. They were short, sweet, and to the point. They simply said "please buy our product; it works," instead of screeching "BUY THIS STUFF AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF" over loud dance-pop jingles and equally loud graphics. I literally teared up when I saw an old commercial for a Gameboy Color. Aside from this year's ads themselves was the fact that Black Friday tried to bleed into Thanksgiving Day. My friend called Black Friday a "blight upon humanity," but it's more like a suspension of humanity. For one brief moment, people feel it's okay to claw someone's face over a printer (that actually happened to someone).
Even some of the things I normally enjoyed about Christmas lost some of their luster in 2013. I didn't feel like building a gingerbread house, and the mall decorations didn't sparkle quite as much as before. An exception was the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which I enjoyed more than ever, probably because I felt like Charlie Brown. I didn't feel the way I was supposed to feel. Sometimes I could even hear smooth jazz playing when I vented about my problems. I needed a Linus to remind me of what Christmas was all about.
My Linus came in the form of small moments of kindness, joy, and forgiveness. The light in a friend's eyes when they receive an unexpected present (granted, it's easy to light up most people's eyes with free booze, but still). The discovery that another friend isn't angry with you, even when you thought you wronged them and felt soul-crushingly guilty for it. The feeling of slipping a bill through the slot in a Salvation Army bucket. And, finally, hearing Silent Night sung over a guitar, the simple sound embracing a Christmas Eve congregation, faces softened in candlelight. A silent night. What a beautiful thing.
Basically, I didn't find joy in the typical things this Christmas, but I did in more spiritual things. The symbolism of Jesus being born in such a simple, threadbare environment, and the ultimate act of forgiveness He would come to represent, stood out more than ever. Overall, I think this temporary depression led to a change for the better, which makes me wonder if my other emotional ups and downs could do the same.
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