Today is Christmas. Two-thousand and nine years. Maybe next time!
Christmas, at one point, celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind. Sitting outside, smoking a cigarette, watching the cars back-up to the highway at Starbucks, I began to wonder if this is the miracle that its portrayed as. Was saving humanity really such an altruistic act?
What if the birth of the Savior is a punishment from God? What if it's an act on a par with a natural disaster? Christ the infant as tornado. “I have saved you from destruction! Roll this rock up a hill for the next two thousand years!”
Maybe adults have begun to have an inkling that they are alone in the wilderness. Maybe that’s why Christmas brings out the absolute worst in humanity. Suicide rates go up as people see the pointlessness of the whole venture.
Walking into Starbucks one afternoon, I was met with a crowded building, packed full of families who think they have found at least a few moments respite from conversation with their genetic familiars. I was stared down by a fat woman, who gave me a look that showed she had anger not only at my very presence, but had begun to disdain the entirety of the notion of living. A scowl hard-won. She was wearing a bright green sweater with a puff-paint Santa face on it that said BELIEVE. The sweater obviously had ironic meaning, but it's as if she had chosen, to exercise in XXL jersey material, her attempt to once more fool herself into believing that she was not on a pointless loop of sadness each year that culminates in Christmas.
My ideal Christmas would revel in the nihilistic undercurrent that belies most American Christmases, allowing it to the forefront. A sort of Christmas bacchanalia. We would serve the meat, everyone would get drunk on eggnog, we would open our presents, and then we’d throw down in the living room: sons fucking mothers, cousins fucking cousins, babies fucking dogs. Maybe reenact the ultimate fate of our savior by crucifying Uncle Roger in the backyard. Introduce a drawing instead of Chinese Christmas, ala The Lottery in Babylon, in which the stakes include flagellation or burning with hot irons.
So, this Christmas, I want to truly reflect on what that birth in Bethlehem truly means. Born unto us is a savior. We have been given our pardon. Go forth, ye men of the world, and rape! Go forth, and pretend! Go forth, for thine kingdom is the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen! Stomp each other for the sales at Wal-Mart!
