Merry Christmas! 2018

And to the rest of you Godless heathens, go spit.
Just kidding. Middle East don't have a all lights out celebration for Jesus. Why should they? Unless it's a runway for them to show where to point the hijacked plane. Wow, was that bad form on this day of peace on Earth.

I had a co-worker who is super Christian. And he is sickened by the spirit of Christmas NOT being about Jesus. He has a point. The actual day is about the birth of Jesus. The spirit remains the idea is long gone. His point extended to the fact that in every Christmas movie, it is the sentiment of the past that guide our longing. What the Buddhist would point to as why we suffer. Desire for warmth and family. In my co-worker's mind, the awareness of Jesus Christ requires no feeling of lost love, divorced families, misery, dead family members and so forth. He also mentioned that taking the day off for Christmas is a relatively new thing. He didn't say specifically, but since Charles's Dickens "A Christmas Carol" very few industries wanted to associate themselves with Scrooge, so they offered the day off to assuage their guilt. Or to keep the ghosts at bay.

I say "Merry Christmas" to everyone. I don't give a fuck what religion they are. I'm sure we're going to get a few stories about how a bunch of punk teens screamed it in the face of people with a hijab. Awful fucking teens. I prefer to cowardly do it on a keyboard. But seriously folks, enjoy this time of year because as the world gets a little less hospitable it may be where families fracture as well. Christmas isn't really about Jesus anymore. It's about...well, anticipation and disappointment. As much as you try, it's near impossible to not be sucked up into the machine of anticipation and disappointment.
When I was in college, one of my fondest memories was spending it with my girlfriend's family. Scared as shit, to be honest. Her Dad was a cop turned Fed turned watchful Dad who, as progressive as they were, still had guns and wasn't afraid to let me know that fact. Well, anticipation was that I would get to have sex with her, the disappointment...fuck no in that house (though we did, but it was bad and clumsy and...fuck you I was 22 years old). So Christmas to me is that letdown. And you have to accept it on those terms. I find other holidays much more easy. Thanksgiving and Hallow'een are much more fun. The Spring and Summer ones are lame (I am born in the Spring and find it lame!). So enjoy this holiday with people you want to have fun with rather than people you have to tolerate. Life is too short and the holiday anticipation is too high to fully care what the next drop will be.
I think that's why the older you get, the more you consider Old Man Potter's position in life. That the more friends you have, say George Bailey, the more they take from you. That's the problem, George didn't really have friends, he had neighbors he lent money to
MEEEERRRRY CHRISTMAS!