The Silly Season

Next week is the oafishal start of what I like to call the Silly Season. Starting next Thursday, this country will go completely berserk for a month and a half.

There will be parties and meetings of friends and families. Thousands of liters of alcoholic beverages will be consumed, hundreds of tonnes of food will be devoured, and a wonderful time will generally be had be all.

 This “most wonderful time of the year” has devolved over time into a shameless orgy of consumerism and keeping up with the Jones’. Hollyweird is helping fan the flames of this wasteful expenditure of time and money by pumping out movie after saccharine-sweet movie encouraging the public to spend, spend, spend. The overarching message of the “holiday” season seems to be, “if you haven’t spent as much as your neighbors this year, there must be something wrong with you.

Humbug! Balderdash! Insert scatalogical epithet here! I refuse to get caught up in the hype surrounding the Silly Season. I rarely send presents, and do not expect presents from my friends and family. I send personal email messages to friends and family, but not greetings cards. I avoid malls like the plague, and generally hunker down and snarl at the television until the season is over. I see no reason to throw good money away on fripperies and frills (such as greetings cards, decorations, and other accouterments) just because “it’s the Holidays!” I genuinely do not care whether or not other people observe the holidays. If they want to waste their money, let ’em. But I refuse to follow suit just because everyone else is doing it. Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite. When you refuse to allow yourself to get sucked in to the nationwide consumerism free-for-all, you discover that you have more spending money, more free time, and far fewer headaches (both physical and metaphoric).

Why is it that people only give a shrill soprano hoot in HELL about other people during a six week period starting in the middle of November? For 46 weeks a year, people generally treat their fellows with disdain and contempt. But that all magically disappears the morning after Thanksgiving. Back in the middle ages (when most of our “holiday traditions” were created), it made a bit of sense. When actual wolves would sometimes literally appear at your door during the winters, the humble traditions of sharing and caring and visiting neighbors were vital survival tools. This is no longer the case. When we talk about “the wolf at the door” in America today, we’re referring only to figurative hardships.

When the original foundation behind the traditions are no longer valid, the focus of the “holidays” changes from a communal means for survival through harsh winters to a religious observance to a quaint holiday tradition to a marketing ploy. I refuse to buy into the Hype, and I bitterly resent the nonsensical marketing with which I am constantly bombarded. All this advertising is insulting to my intelligence. In my opinion, it is insulting to the intelligence of chimpanzees.

Ookookookackaa aa aa aa aa! Shiny things! Oooooooo!

Current Status: Annoyed

Music: Space Lord, by Monster Magnet.