December 25, 2006 | Festivus reflections

As I lay sick in bed, and likely unable to call out tomorrow from that hell (which I shall soon be freed from, I can only hope) runneth over with spineless hypocrites, I nauseatingly reflect on Shitmas 2006.

The following quote sums up my feelings on Christmas (or any holiday that has been raped and hollowed out for the sake of making a quick buck) more eloquently and ferociously than anything I could come up with:

Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity. No one escapes feeling used by society, by religion, by friends and relatives, by the utterly artifical responsiblities of extending false greetings, sending banal cards, reciprocating unsolicited gifts, going to dull parties, putting up with acquaintances and family one avoids all the rest of the year…in short, of being brutalized by a ‘holiday’ that has lost virtually all of its original meanings and has become a merchandising ploy for color tv set manufacturers and ravagers of the woodlands.

— Harlan Ellison, “No Offense Intended, But Fuck Xmas!” (1972) The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

I make no apologies for my firm beliefs in this matter. After experiencing the atrocities wrought by so-called human beings out to placate their spoiled progeny with vapid toys and intellectual devoid time wasters, Christmas has been perverted from a childhood joy into a steaming pile of fecal matter.

Or perhaps it was always like this, and my brain just finally realized this idiocy.