Shop-ocalypse X

People have lost their fucking minds.  Its Christmas Eve and its like Lord of the Flies in San Diego.  The roads are clogged, supermarkets packed, and every fucking store in the city has a three hour line to check out.  FUCK THIS SHIT!  I wonder what the hell drives people to abandon all common sense along with the semblance of civilization in the mindless hunger to buy buy buy.  Is this the modern equivalent of our primitive instincts?  Is this the kind of ruthlessness and savagery that pushed our species from ape to man?  The most fucked up thing is that its not just a relentless quest to shop, but to define oneself.  Everyone has mysteriously gotten very aggressive about their values, their religion, their meaning of Christmas.  I really don’t give a shit about anyone’s opinions about this garbage, especially when you are getting right up in my grill for no apparent reason.

A buddy of mine told me a short tale of suburban woe yesterday.  One of his neighbors is low down and dirty bible beater and her children (3 and 5) were playing with another neighbor’s kid (3).  The bible beater’s 5 year old told the other neighbor’s 3 year old that there was no Santa, that his mom had told him it was totally bullshit.  The 3 y/o started freaking out, his world began crashing down.  The bible beater mom comes out to see whats up and the 3 y/o asks her to confirm her statements.  She looks at her children, looks at the neighbor’s child, pauses for a moment then replies…

“Some people believe in Santa, some people believe in Jesus.”

The 3 y/o was devastated.  His worst fears coming true, tears streaming from his eyes he runs home to find his mother.  His mom was now totally pissed off because what right did the bible beater have to besmirtch what she had told to her own children.  Now all kinds of motherfuckers are not letting their kids play with the bible beater kids because they don’t want Christmas ruined.

What the fucking FUCK!?

Lets just get a few things straight right fucking now.  I am gonna debunk all your bullshit Christmas myths right here and fucking now.  I have had it with this shit.

The “Ho ho ho destructo-list” (and a happy new year):

Christmas Bullshit #1 – Jesus Was Born On December 25th.

He was probably born in April, but nobody’s sure. After Christianity was Romanized, they decided to celebrate Christ’s birth at the winter solstice because pagan festivals were already held during that time.  So to answer everyone’s questions once and for all, Christmas is not the little baby Jesus’ goddamn birthday.

Christmas Bullshit #2 – Retailers Have Ruined Christmas By Commercializing It.

Until retailers began to see in Christmas the opportunity to market their merchandise the holiday attracted little of the attention it does now. It was retailers who made Christmas exciting. It was they who turned Santa Claus into a national icon. Montgomery Ward gave us Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. Coca-Cola helped popularize the smiling Santa. Retailers discovered the commercial possibilities of Christmas after the Civil War. Only then did newspapers regularly begin to feature advertising sales associated with the holiday.

Retailers helped establish Christmas as an American tradition by persuading Protestants to overcome centuries of hostility to the holiday, which had long been identified as a popish import. The leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony so disdained Christmas that in 1659 they passed a law prohibiting the public celebration of the holiday, punishing “anybody who is found observing [it], by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way.” Yes, this happened in the land of the fucking free you assholes.  The law was repealed 25 years later, but the prejudice against Christmas remained strong. Judge Samuel Sewall was delighted to be able to report in his diary in 1685 that he did not see a single person celebrating the holiday.

Christmas Bullshit #3 – Christmas Cards Are a Venerable Tradition.

Yes, some would agree (not me personally) that Christmas cards are venerable. But it was the Victorian businessman who made the Christmas card an American tradition. Before the middle of the 19th century Americans simply did not send holiday greeting cards at Christmas.

Christmas Bullshit #4 - Christmas Trees Are Traditional.

The Christmas tree first made its appearance in America in the middle of the 18th century, thanks to German immigrants. But a hundred years later it was still rare. In 1851 a Cleveland, Ohio reverend who had recently emigrated from Germany put up a Christmas tree in his local church. He was roundly condemned. Nobody before had ever put up a Christmas tree in an American church. Victorians in the latter half of the 19th century slowly began adopting the German tradition, but the Christmas tree remained controversial. In the 1880s the New York Times editorialized against the Christmas tree. When Teddy Roosevelt became president he denounced the practice of cutting down trees for Christmas (and to a degree I agree with Teddy). Good conservationist that he was, he declared the practice a waste of timber.

Christmas Bullshit #5 – Santa Claus.

Whether he was a Dutch creation, as so many believe, is, according to scholar Eric C. Wolf, doubtful. “There is no evidence,” says Wolf, “that the Santa Claus myth existed in New Amsterdam, or for a century after English occupation.” Santa is loosely based on the European figure, St. Nick, the fourth century Bishop of Demre, Turkey, who was said to have carried a sack full of toys for children. But it was only after the Revolution, when writers began inventing American traditions, that Santa suddenly achieved broad popularity. The myth was slow to build. Not until 1821 was Santa seen flying in the sky behind a pack of reindeer. Only in 1837 do we find evidence that he arrived in American homes via the chimney. And not until the Civil War did Santa look the way we imagine him. In colonial days he was often described as thin and beardless. In 1809 Washington Irving imagined Santa as a bulky man who smoked a pipe and wore a Dutch broad-brimmed hat and baggy breeches. Later, Santa was depicted as a fat man with brown hair and a big smile. Then in 1863 Thomas Nast gave us our modern idea of Santa Claus, as a jolly fat man with a flowing white beard dressed in a red suit.  In closing, the motherfucker is totally made-up, a fat and jolly red-robed crock of shit.

Christmas Bullshit #6 – “Away In A Manger.”

There was no donkey ride to Bethlehem (although the image of a 9-month pregnant Mary bouncing on a donkey does make me laugh) and there was no stable.  The bible has nothing to corroborate this information whatsoever.  Additionally the wise men did not make it to the stable, they were not kings, there is no evidence that there was three of them, and in fact nobody knows who the fuck they are.  There is no evidence of immaculate conception, although Mary did get pregnant prior to being married, at which time an angel had to come down and convince Joseph (the poor sap) to marry his cheating girlfriend Mary.  On a side note I find it interesting that there exists evidence of Mary being a whore yet none of Mary Magdalene being one, and yet Mary M. is the one associated with that reputation.  “Manger” seems to be just an acceptable word to hide the fact that the “Son of God” spent his first night in a place where sheep shit/ate. Jesus was born poor, against the backdrop of impropriety.

Christmas Bullshit #7 – Jesus Is The Son Of God.

There is no proof or evidence of any kind to support this claim.  That’s right bible beaters, you are worshiping a myth as unsupported as Santa.  Snap out of it you braindead fuckers!

Christmas Bullshit #8 – Know-it-all Relatives.

Sugar does not make children hyper.  There are not more suicides at this time of year (actually they mostly happen in the summer months).  While a poinsettia tastes pretty gross, nobody has ever died from eating one, they are non-toxic.

So merry goddamned Christmas… Now go fuck yourself.

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