The Reason for the Season?????

It is getting increasingly easier for me to consider never celebrating Christmas again for the rest of my life.

I don't think I'll ever totally give up on Thanksgiving, because it's such a terrific gorging opportunity. And it feels a whole lot less fraught with drama and unrealistic expectatons than Christmas. But now, more than ever before, I am SO not feelin' the Yuletide spirit.

The two recent Holiday Homicide stories from the US really helped steer me toward this bittersweet conclusion. I mean, what deep discount at Wal Mart possibly could have been worth trampling some hapless employee to death during the early morning hours of the day after Thanksgiving? How can the people who were even remotely involved in that stampede go on living with themselves, knowing that their rabid materialism helped extinguish another person's life?

And then there's the Toys R Us Massacre. The stories I've read suggest the double homicide wasn't directly related to shopping...it just happened to occur the weekend after Thanksgiving in a crowded toy store where most parents forget to set boundaries for themselves and their children, hoping to get the latest, hottest item that will make them seem like the "bestest mommies and daddies ever," even though the whole family may eventually wind up living in the basement of Grandma's house because they got a teensy bit behind on the mortgage payments.

So don't tell me those shootings weren't related to holiday shopping! Overall Pre-Christmas stress, plus knowing you can't afford to buy all that wildly overpriced shit anyway, plus somebody looking at you funny, or maybe bumping the wheels of their cart into the back of your ankles equals steely gray death, plain and simple. It probably wouldn't have happened if they'd been standing in line at the Goodwill store.

Or maybe it would, I don't know. All I do know is the absolutely mindless consumerism that occurs every holiday season has become utterly disgusting to me. Besides, since the Angel of Death started hovering over my family about 6 years ago, I haven't really felt anything remotely resembling the Christmas spirit, anyway.

Last year, being in Gulu for Christmas, so near the passing of my sister Julie, wound up being a complete blessing in disguise. As I wrote then, NOTHING there reminded me of Christmas, so I was spared the incessant, relentless trappings of Christmas in America....the millionth Bing Crosby song, the billionth Hallmark commercial reminding you of how fucked up YOUR life is compared to the people onscreen, the trillionth mouthwatering feast that won't add a single ounce to your already cholesterol-clogged arteries...... It was such a relief to be numb, emotionally empty and unharangued by those things.

This year, I'm in Kenya, where skyrocketing food prices and outrageous corruption by public officials are putting quite the damper on Christmas festivities for the general public. This after many people hoped for a joyous season, following the chaos, death and destruction of the post-election period, which started around Christmas last year and continued through the early part of this year.

The end result? Being a grinch is a total breeze for me during Chrismas 2008, y'all. I'm not thinking about decorations, pies, roast beast, Who pudding....BAH!

Maybe one day I'll catch the spirit again. It might even be nice to actually care about having a tree to decorate, or staying up all night to make pies and brine the turkey and finish wrapping gifts. And to not kill anybody in the process. Meantime, I'll just get through another December not unlike all the others of late.

Ho Ho Hum.