Blow me.

I don't think I can ever, EVER say how much I have grown to hate the so called "Holiday Season." Just typing those two words makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  Wait, hate is such a little word. Loathe doesn't quite cut it either, but I do hope you get the point.

A lot of people, bloggers and soapboxers say this every year, and every year we do survive, however I am going to give you my reasons for wanting the Christmas Holiday to be forcibly removed from society and every persons memories.  To clarify, if you are a religious person and this is a spiritual time for you, that is different; I am only speaking to the consumers that only use this holiday to show off their families like trophies and get all the crap they cannot afford and don't need.  And if you are a consumer out to buy more than your combined yearly salary on useless crap that you will throw out in a month or two but continue to pay for until 2016 then line up to the left for lobotomies.

Okay and now to my reasons.

Remember Halloween?


I mean do you really remember Halloween?  When for the ENTIRE month of October that was all kids could talk about, where ghosts and skeletons would creep into daily life, one day at a time, bring our anticipation to being out after dark and MORE candy than we've seen all year previous?  Do you truly remember the feeling of fall celebration, knowing that the days were getting shorter and there was getting all dressed up to look like a fool, just to get free candy?  Or like some parents I know, free drinks?  Well I do, I remember when Halloween was the MONTH of October, and then November 1 cornucopias and turkeys and Pilgrims were seen for as far as the eye could see.  Family togetherness WAS celebrated and all the TV commercials and store decorations and town and city decorations reminded us to be thankful for your families and our country.  Tell me honestly if you remember the fall decorations that showed off our heritage and reminded us that Turkey day was coming and was, well KINDA IMPORTANT.

I do.

Now, do you know what I see?  F*CKING CHRISTMAS decorations OCTOBER 15!!!! YES I SAID TRUE! What happened to fall?  WHAT HAPPENED TO MY EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF CANDIES AND FOOL ACTING?  AND AND AND AND I WANT MY TURKEY DAY BACK!!!!! I don't want to think about 'black Friday' or holiday shopping or what ever the stupid rejects are coming up with now to get us to spend more money than we have just so we don't feel guilty about coming emptied handed to see family, because you know just seeing your family during a time of year that it is, well, important, isn't officially important anymore.   I guess.  Or at least not with out spending excessive amounts of money first.

EVERY YEAR.  EVERY. YEAR. Christmas has been creeping up the calendar...  I am not kidding.  Mall Santa started in both malls I currently work at on NOVEMBER 8th!!! NOVEMBER 8TH.  One more time.  NOVEMBER 8th!!! The mall didn't even put up fall decorations, or MENTION TURKEY DAY at ALL.  AT. ALL.   Now yes, I am 'yelling' again, but I want to make sure that I am clear.  I saw Christmas trees (which are part of the pagan religions, you know Yule?  It's not even Christian) for sale in Wal*Mart at the beginning of OCTOBER.  Maybe it was even the end of September, I don't shop too much anymore. 

Now I guess what I am getting at boils down to this question: What is wrong with us?  I am asking everyone reading this, Google and Facebook people: WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?  Why is this one holiday, more important than the rest?  Why is it all about selling, and sales and buying crap?  Why is it about out shining every one else on the amount of money and crap you spend/accumulate just for ONE DAY.  Not even Chanukah, the holiday that isn't really advertised (unlike Christmas) they give gifts for EIGHT NIGHTS. Why aren't the marketing assmonkeys going after a holiday like that?  I mean really? Wouldn't eight nights of gifts be more financially lucrative than ONE? It's kinda basic math here people?! (And please no Jewish jokes here.)

Now I am ranting, with a bit of personal research to back me up.  I work retail. I talk to consumers and they like talking, a lot. Let me tell you! And the Jewish customers I have always shop smart and make fun of the Christmas shoppers, and the Christmas shoppers are oblivious because they can't see anything other than the shiny, shiny items in their hands that they are paying for with plastic.

You can do this same research even if you don't work retail.  Just go shopping and watch people.  Pretend you are going to buy stuff at stores and actually pay attention to the consumer masses around you.  You will see people walk in, look around as if lost, pick up the item closest to them, give it a cursory glance and buy it.  Not read the back, not ask any one about it. Not even check the price.  I have seen this happen on so many occasions.  Then if you frequent this store, you will see said buyer come back in about a week and return the item, un-opened, and start the process ALL OVER AGAIN. If you don't believe me check it out. 

This is why I HATE/LOATHE/DESPISE/DETEST/ABHOR/ABOMINATE/EXECRATE Christmas and all the 'holilday season' is.  It has proven that we, as Americans, as a mass majority are MINDLESS.  We do what the pretty flashy lighted box tells us to do.  We buy and buy and buy and buy until we can't even move underneath our material crap.  Well, I was about to say we're mindless, but I already said that.  Why are we like this?  What the hell are we doing to ourselves?  To our Nation?  To our future?

Wait, did I just answer my own question?  Is it because we are mindless that the spirit of the holidays has be lost to the dollar and martial gain?

Happy Thanksgiving to all whom remember what Thanksgiving really is.  And I hope it's okay I didn't do pictures throughout the entire post.  I tried to search for 'Christmas Holiday Pictures' and I suddenly felt very ill.

OHHH YEAH. One more thing:

Don't even get me started about Christmas Music.  If I hear Jingle Bell Rock one more damned time, I will jam safety scissors in my ears.  OH yeah, and I'm talking this season, you know before Thanksgiving. Also, you are very welcome for having that song now playing in your head :) . Welcome to my hell.

Have You Ever Wondered

..... What goes through some peoples heads at any given time?

I have, actually I am sitting here pondering that exact thing at this exact moment in time.  What makes people think that they can actively and passionately push their thoughts and beliefs down other peoples throats when the other party is nothing but polite and kind and asks to be left alone?  Why do people treat people with disrespect when the other party is doing their best to be respectful?  Why do people abuse power?

And I think that is the one that is really really irking me.  The abuse of power.  Marvel Comics, I think, got it right with the teaching of Uncle Ben to Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility."  That rings so true with anything, from parenting to police officers, political figures to the President, military officials to their lower enlisted on down the line. 

Now I understand the theory of gravity, shit rolls down hill.  I get that, but things also go up, given enough force- and some things don't even take a lot of force to go up. Somethings rise on their own and are marveled at by the young and the old.  Somethings that aren't as tangible do the same, like praise, respect and love.  Maybe respect should be at the front of that list, because when a person that is socially below another person respects the one in power, that respect rises on wings of fire and lights the one in power up like the sun.  We've all seen it in history, look back at any person whom has earned a lot of respect, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Don't you think that they have a glow about them?  Something that makes them shine just a bit brighter than Joe Blow walking down the street?  It's not the fame, it's our respect for them.

But I did say something important there, if you caught it.  These people have power, even though some of them are gone from us, but they EARN respect.  They didn't bask in it.  They didn't or don't abuse their power, they remained equal to those whom felt socially below them, and because of that they EARNED all of our respect, our loyality and most of all our trust.  

Now we have people in every walk of life that hold power, hold dominion over other people and they don't seem to remember that they are people just like those they hold power over.  They instead put themselves on this pedestal of  self righteousness and believe themselves to be better than those under them.  Those people we can look upon and see that they don't shine. They don't even try to come close to glowing.  They just sit there and bask in their own power, which makes them dull to look upon.  Uninteresting, and in some cases down right unpleasant to lay our eyes on. Yet a lot of these people hold a lot of power over the rest of us, like those in congress, like nut jobs in our government that believe, more for financial reasons, that science should be taught through biblical glasses and that they should have full control over what we think. 

 This is wrong.  They don't hold our trust, our loyalty or our respect because they have done nothing to earn it.  They've actually done the opposite but because they hold this power, because money has put them in this position, we just turn our eyes away and let them bask, and ruin our lives.

I am talking big picture stuff here, stuff that a lot of people stay willfully ignorant of, and that is one thing I personal loath, but this also happens on every level of the social stratum.  Not just in politics, but in family life, in the Judaical branch, in work environments. It happens all the way down to the pack mentality of the human condition, where you can see exactly what I am talking about on the play grounds of grade-school children, of bullying in middle and high school.  The teachers playing favorites to those few students they can see out of their forty or fifty kids in a class room.  Of the workers in fast food joints that have one poor soul whom works and works and works but never gets recognized because they are a decent human being and are unwilling to step on other people to advance.  In college for those middle classers whom are neither genius or jock, but do very well in school, do we hear about them?  Those are the ones that deserve to shine with our respect.  Those are the people whom we should be loyal to because they are loyal to us.

Now what happens to those who do everything they need to do and keep getting knocked over by the logs o' crap rolling down the hill?  Nothing, is the first thing that pops into most peoples heads, or they deserve it because they don't move, comes to other peoples minds.  Yet when they try to move, when they try to rise up and be seen so they are not trodden over, they are put down like dogs because door mats are not supposed to complain.  They are not supposed to argue or get the respect they deserve because they have prostrated themselves into that position at the beginning. And they only did it to show respect for those above them. 

To this I say: Stand up.  No one person, no matter their income, no matter their social standing, or lack there of, their religious beliefs, or political positions are above any other person.  Just because I can't do mental math very well, or spell for anything, does not mean that I am any less than a human being than the President or Thomas Edison. It just means that I am a person just like them with a different calling in life.  Just because I never spoke up about things that irritated me, or my true feelings, doesn't mean that when I can no longer hold my tongue because the situation has gone too far that I should be put down like a dog and punished for not being the good little door mat I prostrated myself to be.

What it really means is that I am a human being, and I am an equal to you and any one else reading this.  It means that I am entitled to my opinion and my thoughts and my beliefs, and I am not going to lay down and take it any longer- because shit stinks.  It means that any one who does voice their opinion, or their thoughts or their grievances should be respected just like they respect the person they are speaking to.  And if the person doesn't respect their audience they still SHOULD be given respect, because as a human they deserve a bit, and if they have a valid point then a bit more, and if they do everything they can to show you the validity of their point with out using personal opinions as fact then they deserve even more of your respect.  And if you, the one they are speaking to are on your own pedestal and you don't see a glow about you, or you notice that no one looks your direction then listen to the one speaking to you.  Listen, because your social life really does depend on how you treat that person, and if you want to glow, even just a little bit, maybe you'll take what they say with a grain of salt and remember what Uncle Ben said.