POINT/COUNTERPOINT is where I enter into a serious argument with myself. Think of it like Colbert's schtick, except more relevant and with less ties. Do not be alarmed if I start referring to myself as a "queeroid," it's all part of the show.
Today's POINT/COUNTERPOINT* regards Christmas, the season of
Christmas is arguably the World Cup of holidays in that 2 billion people tune in and Americans are bored shitless by it even though it's actually a pretty cool event and you should just crawl out of your fucking comfort zone and try to experience something that requires a little more patience than sitting on the can you PROPELLOR-HEADED FUCK. But is Christmas really all that?
I posit that Christmas actually sucks and is an inferior holiday to, say, Lincoln's Birthday. No, wait, scratch that, Labor Day. Yeaaaahhh, there we go.
If you don't believe me, then check it out:
Christmas is filled with mindless, soul-crushing, shitty consumerism. Yes we all get it by now. You have to give a gift on Christmas or else you're a fuck. But in our consumerist society, the pressure is ratcheted-up to unbelievable levels. Even in a
Lexus is starting in again with it's fucking Give-Him/Her-A-Lexus-For-Christmas-Complete-With-Bow gimmick. I rarely utterly despise commercials, but Lexus (and Zales and Jarret's, I WILL KILL YOU JARRET IF I SEE YOU) always pushes me over the edge. Anyone who can afford to give a Lexus SUV for Christmas is a gargantuan shit who should be kicked off the planet. There I said it.
It's bad enough everyone on Christmas feels the pressure to really wow people with an (expensive) gift, having shitlords like Lexus suggesting you take out a second mortgage to do so (even if the commercial isn't actually effective at all) is awful. And really, a Lexus? Why don't they advertise by having people drive around slums in Lexuses, stopping in front of people waiting for public transportation, rolling down the window and giving everyone one of those ;) faces. The only tragedy is that that emoticon fails to capture the smugness I'm trying to portray.
All of this is compounded by "consumer guides" that actively point you to the most expensive products you could possibly buy, ignoring or shunning cheaper alternatives that are just as effective, if not more (AHEM IPOD AHEM). Hmmm, you want to buy a TV for someone? How about a BIG GIANT FUCKOFF PLASMA FROM SONY. YES GET THE BRAVIA. DO IT YOU FUCK. THAT IS JUST MY FRIENDLY SUGGESTION.
The Christmas consumer rush is really nothing more than a poorly veiled swindle. They raise the basic "you're not spending enough" guilt shit, and then they nail you with the expensive Blu-ray player trap. It's nothing more than a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, high-school peer-pressure ploy for petulent pukes (pbuh) that I avoid participating in as much as I can. I suppose, though, that it is inevitable. But unless you are 100% sure that the gift you're getting is going to make the other person happy, buying expensive shit on Christmas just means that after Christmas, everyone is poorer some way or another. Either your wallet is lighter with nothing to really show for it, or you're too damn poor for it anyway and now everyone thinks you're a jerk. Hey, thanks Santa!
Speaking of Santa, the whole Santa myth is a waste of time. I don't know if I'll tell my kids the truth about Santa, that he is not real, that the real person he was based off of died a long time ago (and is still dead, believe it or not), and that the person who currently runs his operation is significantly less jovial than you'd expect. What I do know is that the Santa myth has very little upside and a very steep downside.
Of course the whole Santa myth serves two purposes: 1) it pre-disposes children to expect awesome toys at Christmas, thus turning them into good little consumers who will keep up that expectation long after the illusion is destroyed; and 2) it has a (neglible) behavioral control with the whole coal-in-the-stocking thing.
Personally, if I do play the Santa myth with the tikes, it will be a nice big stocking of fecal matter. Santa can't waste good anthracite just to make a point!
The myth is poorly constructed, though, and it's any wonder how kids don't catch on by 1st grade. NOT THAT I TOOK EXTRAORDINARILY LONG TO CATCH ON MYSELF. I mean, come on. Flying reindeer? Get with the fucking times, Santa. Just say he has a jet, or a jet pack, or a teleporter or something. A fucking sleigh and reindeer, really? How are kids not questioning the logistics of this? Does he resupply in mid-air? Or does he have strategically placed present dumps around the world? What about no-fly zones and hostile airspace? What happens if the house burns down before he gets to it? Does he leave the gifts in the wreckage? And how the hell does he have the same wrapping paper as mom and dad?
I think the first hint I had that Santa was bullshit was when I realized the absurdity of a man with elves in a fucking wooden workshop being able to build me a Nintendo game. And then he decided to put it in the same packaging they had in the store. Oh really? Nintendo licensed Santa to build his own version of Mega Man IV AND the design of the package? And they did this out of the good of their heart? No way, sir, the cost-benefit analysis doesn't hold water! If I were an industry and Santa was freely building my shit, you can bet there'd be an injunction filed all over the fucking planet, pronto.
The ultimate problem with the myth, though, is that it has to end. Everyone catches onto the con sooner or later, and then you're just thinking, well what the fuck was that about, anyway? It wasn't about anything. It was a tradition. And now, for you, it's over. Thanks for playing!
But what about the kids who figure it out the hard way? They catch mom & dad scarfing cookies meant for SANTAAAAAAA? Or they find the gifts stashed away? Yeah right, mom, Santa's only supposed to come on Christmas Eve. WHY DO YOU HAVE HIS GIFTS THREE WEEKS EARLY? WHAT DID YOU DO TO SANTA YOU HORRIBLE BITCH??
All that causes is a lot of trauma for nothing. So in that way, Santa is like a giant practical joke played on kids. Hmmm, actually, that's pretty hilarious. Maybe I should rethink my criticisms here...
White Christmases, like the white man, are an abomination. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas where I don't have to deal with the consequences. I love all the Facebookers going YAAAAAY IT's SNOWING!!!! To a man, they're all women, which means they don't have to shovel it. Well go to hell YOU HARPIES!
Look bitches, I know your idea of hard work is slapping on Lee press-ons and waxing your eyelashes or some barbaric shit, but in the real world, when it snows, men, large, sexy men like me, have to shovel it up. And that's a shit job if there ever was one.
All Christmas does is create the idea that snow is tolerable and something to be welcomed. Even news anchors, though, recognize the incongruity of this. No, Jim, snow is not "cool" (heh), it's not "fun." It means work. Backbreaking work. Work that makes you question the validity of life. And they know that. And they also know that snow causes more problems than it solves (except all that reservoir refilling shit blah blah blah who cares about drinking water!) But we still have to hope that it snows on Christmas, one of the busiest traveling times in the year. That's like hoping that your team's bus gets into a 50-car pileup on the highway right before the World Series. And don't think it won't happen, Bostonians. It will happen. Mark my words, if it's the last thing I do, IT WILL HAPPEN.
People should not be made to jump up their own asses about snow on Christmas and how it's so sad that it didn't snow on Christmas. Guess what? The first time it snows on Christmas I said, "Wow, that's cool... whelp..." Yeah that's right, it means nothing. NOTHING. SO STOP ASKING FOR IT.
Chestnuts and eggnog taste like ass. There's a reason they don't come out any other time of the year, people.
Last but not least, Christmas is an exercise in misery. Christmas is basically the only holiday, except for Thanksgiving, that acutely fucks with people's emotions and expectations. Simply put, if your family situation is not all spic-and-span, and if you're not with them, you're probably drowning in tears and desperately downing SSRIs like yummy Hershey's Kisses. Now think of all the people who are in that boat and are desperately poor. Yup, this is a cause for celebration!
This situation is perhaps ironically best described by Band-Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, which is basically the penultimate in bourgeois ignorance about the world. No, Bono, they probably don't know because they're too busy dying in terrible and creative ways. And most don't care anyway.
As a side note, the Christmas episode of Pop-Up Video is seriously the best of that show, and that show had some mint episodes.
Define irony: Africa is a shithole because it has been and still is exploited for its resources, one of which is diamonds. At Christmas, we're told to look out for our fellow man. And also to buy diamonds. Diamonds from Africa. Diamonds that people died to extract. Yes, Virginia, Blood Diamond is not entirely bullshit! There really are South Africans who look as nice as Leonardo DiCaprio. Their breath is still shit, though, from what I hear. And don't get me started on that hobo-bobobo accent they have. Goddamn, does everything the Dutch touch have to be such shit?
Anyway, where was I? God he's so dreamy.
Oh, yes, poor people. It must be a real hoot to be a bum. For those who still are clinging to their sanity, I wonder how aware they are that they're fed by the population at large for only two times out of the year. Do they look forward to their complementary Christmas gruel? Do they see it as a Christmas bonus? Congrats, dude, everyone has been avoiding eye contact with you. For hanging in there for so long, here's a turkey leg! Don't freeze to death it's supposed to be a white Christmas after all! Haw haw haw haw (slams door in uncomprehending bum's face).
In fact, at halftime of today's loltastic Jets game, they did the local news. And the nice half-Asian, half-Caucasian newslady said there was a CODE BLUE out for city services to round up all the homeless so that they don't freeze to death. I was like, "That's nice, they don't mind people lying on sidewalks high out of their minds, but if the temperature hits 32 F, uh oh! Gotta get those guys a place to sleep!"
The way Christmas is run, it only serves to put a mask on how awful things can get. Just play It's a Wonderful Life and everyone will be happy being poor. Except they can't be, because they're not spending any money and so people should hate them for being poor! Everyone has to pretend that it's all cool because the TV tells us it's all cool and the music tells us it's all cool (except for that fucking Christmas Shoes I HATE YOU.). But it's not. On Dec. 26, everyone has to get off the Christmas high, and now everyone is sad because the celebration is over. But was there really a celebration to begin with, Charlie Brown? Was there really?
I say no. People get unduly lonely because of Christmas. Do you see people getting all weepy and shit for Arbor Day? Only the hippies, my friend. Only the hippies. And they are not real people. But Christmas pushes everyone's buttons, the poor in spirit especially.
If I'm being a bummer, sorry, but for many people Christmas is already a bummer and they don't need me to say it! And someone needs to say it!!!! I am an important person!!
Whoops, almost forgot: Christmas movies are shit now. Oh look, another Vince Vaughn Christmas movie. That's so completely sterile and pointless. And it doesn't even feel like a Christmas movie. Fucking Die Hard feels more like a Christmas Movie than Four Christmases.
There hasn't been a good Christmas movie since Home Alone 2. And some of the "classics" are tripe as well. The Christmas Story is a movie enjoyable only to old people. Why? Because it reminds them of when they were young. To everyone else, it's terrible because it shows us what life was like when people were forced to find shit like listening to the radio and decoder rings to being the pinnacle of entertainment. Holy God, DECODER RINGS? I'M BECOMING ENRAGED JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.
In conclusion: Christmas is a trap designed to lure the barely sane into its maw, and then crush their spirits with false hope. You can hide behind as many of your silly traditions as you want, you can't stop the inevitable post-Christmas letdown. And you KNOW it's coming, oh yes. Mwahahahahaaha, haahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
* Today's POINT/COUNTERPOINT was sponsored by the Committee to Make Easter Even Cooler Than Christmas.
Tune in next time for a rebuttal. A very sexy rebuttal. The kind you want to touch.
Yes, you may touch it.
F
You do not use "In conclusion" to end an essay. See me after class.
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