Shopocalypse Now

Once again, ‘tis the season in which I celebrate not celebrating Christmas. It’s a personal tradition, begun 20 years ago, that’s only gotten easier over time.

Distancing myself from Christmas wasn’t something that happened all at once, it happened in increments as I abandoned one destructive Christmas ritual after another until none remained. Call it “tapering off,” if you will.

You see, Christmas is a holiday tradition that no longer works for me, primarily because it’s touted as a religious tradition and there’s no room in my life—or in my philosophy—for religion. A second reason is that Christmas has devolved into a shopocalyptic spending frenzy that’s become a cash cow for corporations at the expense of everything else.

If shopping ‘til you drop, then working ‘til you drop to pay the tab is your thing, go for it. But count me out. I prefer to celebrate this holiday season in observance of my new tradition—blogging about how and why I kicked the old tradition.

Harry Kwanukkahmas!

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Crap!

Dr. Mr. StrangeDerangedlove: Or, How I Learned to Hate Santa and Love the Grinch is how I originally wanted to title this piece, but Blogger limitations forbade me from formatting it that way, so I had to come up with a new title. Crap! pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole situation.

If you’re thinking that I’m about to take a dump on Christmas, bingo, you just won a prize for prescience. I’ll tell you what your prize is in a minute.

As for understanding why I hate loathe Santa, you have to understand what it’s like to watch, over ten days, a 40-acre old-growth-and-mature-second-growth forest felled and fed into the maw of a chipper in order to make way for a Christmas-tree farm. That I played a part in all of that destruction (I drove one of four chip trucks that hauled wood chips from the chipper to the paper mill) only deepens my resolve to disavow Christmas and all its traditions, including Santa. There is no redemption, otherwise.

Then there’s the diesel fuel consumed to deliver Christmas trees to distant cities, and the gigawatts of electric power consumed to keep the Christmas lights lit for a month, and the rolling brownouts caused by entire neighborhoods dedicated to decorative displays of Christmas lights solely for the amusement of motorists who have nothing better to do than drive around gawking at Christmas lights—more wasted fuel, and more carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

And let’s not forget about the environmental destruction and all the resources that are wasted in the making and disposition of all those crappy gifts that change hands during the Christmas season. More than 90% of all this stuff will end up in a recycling center or a landfill within six months, so why bother?

By not giving material gifts of questionable value, I give the most valuable gifts of all—cleaner air and water, less pollution, a safer, more enjoyable environment. These are the gifts I willingly give to everyone, including those prescient people who won a prize for intuiting that I was about to take a dump on Christmas.

“But Christmas is for the children . . .”

Oh, Bullshit! Christmas is Christianity’s gift to capitalism, to corporatocracy, commerce and consumerism. Bah! Humbug! To my way of thinking, Christmas is not worth destroying the planet for. It’s time to dispense with old, wasteful traditions and establish new, less wasteful ones.

Harry Kwanukkahmas!