Merry Non-Denominational Winter Holiday

Apparently there's somewhat of a hissyfit being thrown by certain fundamentalists over the war being waged against their annual celebration of Jesus' birth, also known as Christmas. Seeing as how Jesus died for the sins of humanity and went to live with his old man in heaven about two thousand years ago, these people are taking it upon themselves to ensure that his name will forever be used to sell decorations and toys.

Someone explain something to me. First, Jesus was all like "Get that commercialism shit out of this temple or I'll flip out and cast you out myself." and people seemed to think that was a good idea. The house of God is no place for consumerism and capitalism. This part makes sense to me. Don't mix people's faith with consumerism, as it will most likely end up in the exploitation of the masses.

Somewhere between then and now, it became tradition to celebrate this man's birth by buying eachother presents. This, in and of itself, isn't too bad. Christianity (to the best of my knowledge) puts a lot of emphasis on giving to those in need, so I can see how the gift-giving part of this holiday still falls within Jesus' teachings. Spend time and money on others, to make them happy. Of course, the gifts don't necessarily go to those in need, but those who are important to us, so there's already some discrepancy. Reasonable, though, seeing as how buying presents for our loved ones is hard enough. Imagine trying to please total strangers.

I have absolutely no clue how Santa Claus began to tie into all of this, but I like to think that he was created to let non-Christians get in on the fun. Don't practice the same religion? No problem, just invent a fat man in a red suit to keep the kids entertained, and buy eachother presents all the same. Everybody's happy.

Now, the confusion kicks in when I hear people claiming that not celebrating this holiday is equal to waging a war against it. There is a war being waged against a religious holiday, but the biggest complaint I keep hearing is that the phrase "Happy Holidays" is slowly replacing "Merry Christmas". There are people boycotting stores because they use "Happy Holidays" in their commercials. People actually think those two words are going to destroy the foundation of their solemn tradition.

Hey, dumbasses. First, your messiah tries to seperate materialism and religion. Then, over the next two thousand years, materialism becomes a large part of your biggest religious holiday. After realizing that even Jesus Christ himself couldn't take the materialism out of religion, people begin to try to take the religion out of materialism instead. It seems to me that if I were a Christian, I'd be happy to see companies removing my savior's name from their commercials. Why not let others buy eachother gifts and spread good will and all that crap without using religion to sell stuff? Wait, what am I thinking. Instead of letting people do whatever they want during the holidays, why don't you get offended if people don't use the correct terminology to express good will. While you're at it, why not fight to get your messiah's name used to sell as many different products as possible? We all know how happy Jesus would be to come back to Earth and see that his birthday is celebrated by lining up in crowded stores and comparing gifts. He'd also like to see people acting like crybabies because "Happy Holidays" doesn't acknowledge him. We all know how much Jesus hated it when the house of God began to resemble a bazaar, so why not boycott the companies who refuse to associate Christ's name with the annual explosion of consumerism that Christmas has become these days?

The above refers to a very select group of people, though. Otherwise, I don't celebrate Christmas because I never got into it that much. I don't really have much of an explanation besides the religious aspect not applying to me at all and the traditional side of it not having much appeal to me.

I also never understood the hatred for socks. The few lackluster Christmases I remember involve receiving yet another book or board game or toy while my socks resemble swiss cheese at a firing range. Just a few good pairs of socks that could last me more than a month would have probably improved my opinion of Christmas in general substantially.

Note: I realize a lot of this particular blog is probably based on assumptions about Christianity and Christians in general, and probably doesn't apply to 99% of the people out there. In fact I'm pretty much talking out of my ass most of the time because the truth is I have absolutely no idea of the real origins of Christmas, both the religious version and the traditional version. I guess you could say I'm ranting about things that don't concern me at all. Furthermore, I'm a greedy bastard who doesn't enjoy spending large amounts of money on loved ones. This may bias my opinion in some way. Also, Christmas sucks.

You're jealous.

So this company called Babel Media is going to be paying me eleven dollars an hour to play videogames all day then tell them what went wrong while I was playing said videogames. Eleven dollars an hour to PLAY GAMES and WRITE STUFF. And if I happen to do more than forty hours a week of playing games and writing stuff, my overtime hours are worth sixteen bucks an hour.

They're going to pay me to play videogames and write stuff down! Little do they know that's what I usually do for FREE!

This new job only starts on Monday so in the meantime here's a little story about my current job as a market research interviewer. In case you can't figure it out, my job involves dialing phone numbers and asking people if they want to spare ten minutes to answer some mind-numbingly repetitive and redundant market research questions.

I called this one number the other night and start off with our oh-so-convincing intro paragraph. "Yes good evening, my name is Jacob and I'm calling from Impact Research concerning a market research study. I'd like to know if you have about ten minutes to answer some market research questions with me over the phone at this time." Rather than the usual "I thought I told you guys last week I don't care for market research, stop calling this number", the guy on the other end of the line starts with "Well I'm sort of busy right now but if you give me your home number I'll call you later and we can talk for a bit."

This was the first time somebody had tried to mess with me, and I was sort of proud that it was coming from a Montreal number. Just goes to show how much better we are than you (assuming you don't live in Montreal. If you do, keep on rocking, friend). So of course I'm not going to sit there and stammer like someone who's not from Montreal, I'm going to mess around just as much with this guy as he's trying to mess with me.

"Well man I'd love to give you my number and all but I don't see what good it would do seeing as how the computer I need to take your answers down with is in the office and not at home. If you want I can just write your number down and call it from home and we can talk all you want though." This must be just as good as him getting my number and calling me, right? I mean, I already have his phone number so why not just call him myself if he wants to talk so badly?

He must not have thought this was a good idea because he once again insisted I give him my number. You see, not only do I sort of not have a phone number (the phone in the house is my cousin's cell phone) but I didn't expect him to call me anyway. So I told him, "Actually, I'm homeless and didn't want to admit it if I didn't have to. That's why I'm working this terrible job. Can we call you back at another time though?"

He either didn't feel sorry for me at all or realized I was quite obviously joking, because he then told me "Oh, you're homeless? Sucks. Anyway I'm actually only robbing this house so don't call back because I won't be here." So this guy thinks he's a comedian or something.

I tell him: "Okay well if you're robbing the place can you leave at least one phone so that when I call back the owners will have a phone to answer?" The last thing I heard before I hung up was him going "NO DAMMIT DON'T CALL BACK!"

But that's all in the past especially seeing how I'm about to start getting paid to play games and write stuff.