Holidays - essay

Why can't we have sensible holidays? Surely the Christmas holiday period has long ceased to be a celebration of the Lord's birthday and degenerated into a seemingly endless period of commercialized insanity. In spite of the fact that the "Christmas Season" begins earlier every year it doesn't seem to lessen the pushing and shoving and the perpetual sea of traffic and zombie-like bodies wandering blankly from window to window, store to store, ever in search of what they seem to know not. Productive work comes to a stop, for all practical purposes, from about December lst to after New Year. In extreme cases probably from Thanksgiving to after the New Year's party.
It is a great mystery to me why people claim to enjoy this absurd round of office and home parties during which they profess to love everyone including those they mostly despise the rest of the year. And subconsciously, of course, they are trying to ruin their health. Why else the cookies and cakes and sweet rich food and drink that are exactly what the doctor does not order? Ever. Fruitcakes and plum puddings are perhaps the worst but Tom and Jerries run a close second in my book of holiday hates. It is as if the entire country is engaged in a gross orgy of mass destruction. And we all know who benefits from it all, don't we?
Just as one is about to recover from Christmas goose, or ham, or turkey or lutefish or all of these combined with the other "necessities" of the Christmas table it is time to put on the funny hats, open the champagne and spend another evening in a similarly gross orgy of self destruction. Who needs it?
Birthdays, too, have a tendency to get out of hand. This can be especially true among the relatively well-off but also has to be carefully guarded against in offices. If you don't watch out you'll find yourself donating to someone's birthday present at least once a week. Then before you know it there will be "just a little break" in honor of so-and-so's birthday. The "little break" soon becomes a necessity for everyone who works there. It then turns into a longer break and threatens to occupy at least one full day a week. Employers beware! Secretaries and clerks are the worst offenders here but virtually everyone should share some burden of guilt for the insidious mess that results. No office birthday parties, I say!
I suggest only two holidays per year. The first one might be called "Grossiola" and would be the functional equivalent of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all rolled into one. It would take place on approximately January 5th when all the sales are in progress and would last for, say, five working days. This would allow us to get twice as much for our money and would also eliminate the greater waste of time that currently takes place. It would also eliminate most of the crowds and confusion.
The second holiday would be called "Birthday." It would occur in mid July and at that time everyone would celebrate their birthday simultaneously. This could combine such things as Easter, Valentine's Day, President's Day, Martin Luther King Day, and whatever other "Days" there may be. I suggest this, too, should be five working days which, when coupled with week ends, would give everyone sufficient time to recover from the inevitable excesses that would occur.
Naturally merchants would not be in favor of such a scheme. However, they could be convinced if allowed to develop entirely new lines of gratuitous greeting cards, plastic junk, unhealthy candies, and suitably expensive decorations, to say nothing of environmentally degrading and utterly useless gifts.
Sneer if you like, but remember you'll have to continue to confront the absurdity of Valentine's Day, the hypocrisy of Chistmas and Easter, and the madness of Halloween (I realize this is not a holiday but it wastes just as much time, effort, and money, all to teach little kids to be extortionists). Are all these holidays really necessary?
Currently there is a great fuss by certain fundamentalist Christians that a conspiracy exists in America to remove Christ from Christmas. This manifests itself in greeting cards that say “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” instead of Merry Christmas. I suggest there is indeed such a conspiracy. It began a long time ago. When the first merchant realized how much money could be made by commercializing this so-called birthday party. No, I guess it is really all Clinton’s fault. There’s no accounting for dimwits. Just look at the present Administration.