Jesse Medina
The Paw Print
I seem to remember the holidays before they really became the Holidays. That is when these holidays actually had their own individual special, separate names such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and good ol’ Christmas. These special holidays had their own peculiar customs which made it an absolute joy to celebrate them when I was a child. They were magical times of the year. Now these days, it seems that someone decided, “What the hell? Let’s just mash them all together and call them the Holidays. It will be ridiculously profitable. Three months of Christmas income.”
The uniqueness of these holidays seems to become less and less vibrant and exciting. They lost their personal individuality and have been replaced by a hybrid form of Christmas which demands the spending of money we don’t have for tons of garbage. Cool garbage I’ll grant you, but garbage none-the-less. The insatiable lust to start hoarding presents at rewardingly cheap prices strikes the United States like the plague that ravaged Europe in the 1300s.
Halloween sees the first inkling of the mutant Christmas holiday which has grown far beyond its original Santa-driven mold. The sales begin. We all see the commercials and think, “That’s a great price for a flat screen, hi-definition T.V.” and “Gee whiz, a blender with 56 speeds for five dollars at Wal-Mart, you can’t beat that!” In actuality, there is no difference between these commercials and other ones that are repeatedly bashed into our brains throughout the year. The only differences lie in the commercial’s sales pitches being sung in Christmas carol form and a dwarf in candy cane socks driving a new Toyota Sienna. Seeing Christmas commercials in October is completely ridiculous, yet this is how it begins. The seed is planted.
So the next holiday we all look forward to is Thanksgiving. We love the eating and family get-togethers that accompany Thanksgiving. Yet it’s starting to lose its identity too. What happened to Thanksgiving being about eating a ridiculously large meal with your belligerent family, and watching football until you pass out with a half-full beer in your hand and dreams of deep fried turkeys doing swan dives into bowls of mashed potatoes? Those were the Thanksgivings of my fore-fathers. Personally, I kind of prefer them that way. Despite all of the positives listed above one can’t help but feel that turkey day as we know it is becoming a day that is now being used to prepare for the notorious Black Friday orgy of purchasing. Half of the day is spent making food, the other preparing for the 3 a.m. thunder-dome of purchasing, wrapping paper for twenty-five cents and that twelve dollar toaster for you sister-in-law.
The Black Friday rush is really disgusting. Anyone who really doesn’t believe in evolution should just watch the news on that day. It would be like watching what would happen if you gave all the monkeys at the zoo cocaine then turned them loose in a department store. Why are people being trampled to death for batteries marked half-off? Save money is the mantra, but really it’s just a clever slogan. People believe they are saving money by emptying their wallets during these sales. Does it matter if you save five cents if you end up spending a couple grand? This writer doesn’t think so. Trampling people to death seems to not quite be in the spirit of Christmas, but that’s just me.
Finally, we have the December stretch before Christmas. Everyone is going broke buying presents for everyone. It’s usually about this time that the grumblings start – “I hate this holiday, can’t afford anything, damn the stores and this capitalistic society.” Then it happens. Christmas gets here. Joy is spread throughout the land. The three month hell is over and everyone can smile and be happy once again. Why so happy? Well, who wouldn’t be with a 52 inch hi-definition flat screen television, a Playstation 3, a blender with 56 speeds, an ipod touch …
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