Tomorrow it will be gone, if it existed today at all. Yesterday people up at the local mall were like caged beasts ready to attack at a moments notice – over an available parking space, a position in line at a cash register. Tomorrow morning thousands will line up in the early hours of the morning and wait for a variety of stores to open hoping to cash in on Boxing Day deals. Many of them will act like morons as well.

Why? Because they can save a few dollars on some Lululemon?

Spread the love and reduce hate? I wrote an entry about a topic that, on any other day of the year besides December 24th, wouldn’t have elicited that response. But that’s the just thing – one day a year.

There are 365 days in a year – we’ve put aside one of them on which to “spread the love.” We do it, for the most part, by showing that love through the giving of gifts, transforming the representation into one that has become inexorably linked to the worth of those gifts or the number of them that we receive. Running a close second to that is the religious symbolism of the day, even though the birth of the man in question most likely took place in the late spring or early summer. To co-opt the once pagan European masses, one of their own festivals would be forever transformed to represent a lie. While the feast of Basil of Caesarea has long been celebrated in Greece on the 1st of January, during which gifts are exchanged, it would not be until Thomas Nast, the American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist, altered the appearance of a variety of different figures of European folklore into what we know as Santa Claus – one of Capitalism’s greatest champions.

Beyond the magic and wonder, look at the core of Santa’s charming promise. If you’re “nice” he brings you gifts, if you’re “naughty” he doesn’t. It is, in truth, one of the most fantastic schemes going. Just enough of a “lesson” in there to justify it, and a nice fat carrot waiting at the end to prove it out. Even more, it teaches our children a very dark lesson – that to be “good” is commercially translatable, a primer for adulthood with regards to how our society operates.

Christmas is Capitalism at its finest. The last time that I checked, Capitalism wasn’t in the business of “spreading the love”. Many businesses bank on the holiday season to boost their revenues, which, of course, translates into the consumer driven infrastructure of our economy. The fourth-quarter, as it’s lovingly known, is pay dirt. The sales of everything rise, from records to toys to televisions. In the music business, the fourth quarter is viewed ravenously by record labels and retailers. A hundred more units of an album per week without having to seriously sink the marketing dollars required at any other time of the year into promoting it.

I’m not Mr. doom and gloom, though I’m sure that many people believe that to be the case. I’m just a guy that, in the midst of everything that we’ve been sold, chooses not to “relax” and just “go with the flow” because it’s the easy thing to do. Because of that, something must be wrong with me, I must be in love with all things negative and despise the possibility that one day it’ll be Christmas everyday – or at least cling to that belief one day a year before reverting back to the belief that that’s a rather irrational proposition.

Despite the rum and the eggnog, the turkey and the pudding, today isn’t without its reality. As we gather with friends and family, a new front in the War On Terror is quietly being opened in Yemen, another 127 people were casualties of bombs in Iraq yesterday, and the US Senate has passed new healthcare legislation that does not include a public option – a piece of legislation, I might add, that would be laughed out of almost every representative chamber in the industrialized world.

Today, for 24-hours, the world stops spinning. It teeters as if on the edge of a knife, the force of billions refusing to allow its reality to continue to assuage their desire for some well deserved respite – oh, and a new tie rack.

December 25, 2009

Peace on earth. It lasts for a day, maybe three if you include the two days before Christmas. Of course, given that it’s a holiday connected with the Christian calendar much of the world doesn’t subscribe to the warm fuzzy feeling that many identify with at Christmas. That said, today it’s business as usual, and business is good.

Today numerous innocents in various parts of the world will unknowingly step on landmines that have been sitting dormant for years. A single misplaced step will cost them their legs, arms, and quite possibly their lives. Today, even though most of the folks at Indian Head probably have the day off, the weapons that the facility produces sit patiently waiting to be spit polished and shipped off. Today, across the world, some of our greatest achievements as a species, weapons designed and constructed to kill with greater efficiency and lethality, are rolling off of production lines.

Today it’s business as usual in the one business that never suffers the snakes and ladders of economic downturns, that doesn’t stop to observe those hypocritical holidays on which we pretend to be something other than that which we routinely refuse to acknowledge. No matter the state of things, someone somewhere will always need weapons and there will always be plenty of them to meet their needs. And no matter what we might do for a living, we are all a part of the machine that allows that reality to exist and proliferate.

Peace on earth is for Christmas cards and festive decorations. The first will go in the garbage two weeks from now. The second will be packed away in boxes until next year. In Christian churches throughout the world Luke 2:14 is read and congregations contemplate it for nanoseconds. Many then return home and their belief in the application of war to solve problems continues unabated. To meet that belief the weapons required to execute it are always primed, ready, and waiting.

It all comes down to a simple question – what keeps you safer, the belief in peace or belief in it when it’s convenient? Yes, that is a rather idealistic assertion. But never forget, nothing positive in this world has ever come into being that wasn’t once thought too idealistic to be realistic, and that includes the teachings of a certain someone that has, for some time now, been referred to as the King Of Peace.

December 26, 2008 19 Comments

First, Merry Christmas to everyone. I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks for another year of your support. I’ve been blessed with a truly amazing group of fans from around the world and hope to continue to earn your support through my recorded work, live performances, and commitment to this website. For me, it is the best gift that I have receive every year.

Second, I want to thank Dale Mugford and Duane Storey for turning this design into a reality. It was completely unexpected and I am truly overwhelmed. It was a wonderful gift. As always, you can check out their portfolio at Brave New Code.

Third, being that I have my whole family coming over to the house for Christmas dinner, if they can make it through the snow, I was given the task of stuffing and popping one of two turkeys into the oven this morning (yes, one of two, a lot of people are coming). That said, by this time tomorrow either I’ll still be here or I’ll have put my entire family in the hospital. Let’s hope for the former.

Anyway, Explosions In The Sky is turned up to 11 and I’m off to do my daily reading. Merry Christmas everyone.

PS: The top graphic and site title are now active links, so you can click on them at any time to return to the main page.

December 25, 2008 34 Comments

Here’s a tiny Christmas present for those of you that are fans of Dear San Diego. I spent some time reposting all of the entries and then creating a page where they can all be found. Enjoy.

December 24, 2008 21 Comments

The photograph that you are looking at was taken in 1914. In it, British and German soldiers are standing together in no man’s land on the Western Front on Christmas Day. On that day, hostilities were halted and the two sides fraternized in the spirit of the season before returning to their respective sides and attempting to annihilable one another.

Rather than write something high minded about the holidays, about the birth that Christmas commemorates and what the child, as a man, radically stood for in the face of aggression, I wanted to make a very plain statement, and the above photograph demonstrates it well enough.

We are not at war with one another, nor have we ever been. We are merely the instruments of the lunacy of others. The thing is, and never forget this – there will always be more of us than them, more of those that would rather climb out of the trenches and walk that distance towards those on an opposing side because of a shared understanding of what madness it all truly is.

If there is anything to be celebrated, let it be the hope that sooner than later we will act on that reality.

My very best wishes to each and every one of you, no matter where you are, no matter what you believe, and no matter how high the walls of your trench may seem.

December 25, 2007 54 Comments