I hate this time of year. Five main reasons (leading up to nice little political rant):

  1. Since age 10, horrified by disconnect between mother’s forced Christmas cheerfulness and her alcoholic confusion (and violent rages).
  2. When I was 23, my younger brother killed himself two days before Christmas (today is the anniversary).
  3. My wife and I have been unable to have children, and several adoption efforts blew up horribly, and the dogs don’t understand the Christmas stuff. Every day is Christmas for them if they get a walk and some attention. Not having children is especially hard this time of year. (We’re making Christmas dinner for some kids, and helping out many more in lots of different ways, but it’s not quite the same.)
  4. This particular year has been very bad for my business.
  5. I’m horrified beyond belief by the disjunction between all the cheerful Christmas lights and the horrors of Iraq and torture and the other crimes of the Bush regime. I have a 45-minute drive home these days, through the most Republican part of Maryland, and this year I’ve noticed many Christmas light displays in ostentatious red, white and blue. A couple of places have American flag images made out of Christmas lights, right in the midst of Santas and angels and an occasional nativity scene. The conflation of cheap patriotism and materialistic religiosity drives me crazy. There is something truly blasphemous and obscene about putting an American flag, which is dripping with the blood of torture, next to a nativity scene, some kind of horrible total double idolatry.  I feel quite socially isolated (and deranged) with such feelings. I keep fantasizing about stopping at this one place and telling the owner I think it’s a public disgrace that he’s put up a giant flag in lights next to a Santa Claus figure. It’s like Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American Way! He probably would not see my point.

And now I’m about to rush out to finally do a couple of hours of Christmas shopping that cannot be skipped. Oh cheerio.

This is not written or reasoned well. Just blowing off some angst.

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