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is xmas passe'? - an essay

i'm ready for xmas, and i suppose that's a big family thing, but to tell you the truth... now, at 30, having been raised as an ony child by a single mom, families to me are a novelty. i actually have a large family on my mom's side, but i only see them once every month or two, so it kinda makes me want to have xmas every 2 years, or maybe every election year, which also happens to be an olympic year.

oh. i've got it. let's have christmas during the "winter" olympics year.

that would be 2006. but 4 years might be too long to wait. so i'll compromise. how about, every odd number year goes to xmas, and the even numbers go to olympics, and elections.

i think it's a good idea. because our corporations began controlling mass culture and perceptions decades ago, and every year they get better at target marketing, it get's harder every year to ingore the gross corporatization of jesus' birthday.

i watched a kid in the super-walmart in enterprise, al. yesterday, playing with a $100 "pimped out" looking excalade suv remote control toy... complete with ground effects, low profile tires, and chrome spinning wheels. the store had stacks of these things, as they are apparently, an "it" toy this year.

something about watching a lower middle class white kid get co-opted by wal-mart, the decadent remains of the once innovative hip-hop culture, and toy manufacturers... while listening to intermittent slices of silent night over the p.a., which is constantly being interrupted by sales announcements - makes me want to swallow my own tongue while drowning myself in motor oil.

i'm over it. although our consumer culture would never ever contemplate it, i think we might need to acknowledge that xmas is passe'.

i will buy as little as possible this year, and absolutely nothing on a credit card. seasonal retailers can go fuck themselves.

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