Mr. White’s -Christmas is dead-

Are we able, as a culture, to experience the holidays in any genuine way? I know that my views are outside those of the general public, as I believe that God is dead, but still I cannot help but feel that we can no longer experience holidays as a culture. Capitalism is to blame but maybe it is that the experience hasn’t changed in form, only in content. Christmas is a religious creation but it no longer carries many religious overtones. The holiday has become a time to get together with your family and give presents; it is a cultural experience more than a religious experience. Consumerism has its firm grasp on this experience and so it seems to me that Capitalism (capitalized as it deserves to be) has made a genuine experience of Christmas impossible. It is not enough to say that your family does have a genuine experience because that does not mean that our culture is capable of such an experience. It also doesn’t matter that Jesus’ birthday was not the 24th of December, or that the whole idea of celebration at this time of year does not originate within Christianity; the point is that Capitalism does not allow us a culture to partake of the celebration with any good faith.

Christmas has become my least favorite time of year. I enjoy seeing my family but I didn’t even do that last year and saw them at other times of the year, which was better. Like Office Space, the requirement for one to have Christmas spirit can drive a person insane. Christmas spirit has now been plugged into the profit seeking world we live in; if you do not have the spirit, then you will not shop, and this is what our culture desires. The profit margin has replaced ethical standards and so we no longer weigh the things that are proper to a just society. The change in measures has made the holiday season quintessential to our new cultural desires and we have lost sight of any “true” meaning in Christmas. Even the guy who doesn’t believe in baby Jesus as savior, me, thinks that Christmas had a real meaning, but it is lost now. You may think that what I am saying is all bunk, and you can wrap yourself up in the fact that you experience Christmas in a genuine way, but if our culture no longer participates in such an experience then it will start to erode our individual experiences until there is nothing real left. What is scary is that it isn’t people like me, who think that the experience is founded upon mind weakening rhetoric, who are destroying the experience; it is people who are trying to replace it with Capitalistic tendencies so that you feel like you are making a genuine attempt at experiencing something that is changing right before your eyes (and these people probably go to church as Christians). They are keeping the rhetoric but changing the message. So remember to go out and shop and keep up your Christmas spirit,

Have a merry Christmas,

-Mr. White

mrwhitemrbrown@gmail.com

*Edit by Mr. Brown