Wednesday, December 25, 2013

All I Want for Christmas is Happiness

It's that time of year, when the world seems to turn a little slower, and the air seems a little fresher.
For just about everybody, we start to look at the year we just went through. Questioning every action we made for better or for worst, hoping that we made the right decisions. Wondering if the new year will bring better prosperity and new ventures.
I know that it's a cliche to talk about how much you hate the holidays, and when it comes right down to it I don't hate the holidays. So I'm not going to talk about how much i hate the holidays. Rather I hate what it does to people, and I hate how secluded I feel.
This time of year is spoken about as if it brings people together, which i don't believe has ever actually happened. I can see the idea that the cold of winter would some how make people want to cuddle together for warm and share a fire and stories,makes complete sense to me. But what with the rather ingenious innovations of central air heating and but warmers in cars, that idea is something of a sentiment. Instead of looking for community for warm and the spirit of others to de-thaw  we have replaced it with a simple setting on our microwaves and convection ovens.
So what is the point of gathering together for a festivious of glee and gay cheer? If we are no longer in need of others around us to keep our spirits bright and out butts, why have people around at all?
I would like to say its the common gravitational pull of human nature to have others around, just to have them around but I truly believe its more of a cynical sum of our greed. While being employed by retail .companies for the last four years, which I know is not as much as some, but its more than a lot, I have learned that this time of the year revolves around one thing. The Idea that someone could get another person the best gift possible. This works to the greed of man in two ways.
The first is that we feel that we should be able to make someone else happy as much as possible, and through such actions we make ourselves happier. Its not even a sacrifice, its not a gift of love, its a gift of greed and only done to further ones own gain. Its a mandatory to give, or you will lose out on friendship and love.
This is just how I feel at the very least, if your the kinda person that can genuinely give with no ulterior motive, than bully for you. well done.

The second thing that seemingly presents itself to me is the idea that we deserve what ever we want. I am not excluded from such a high ranking thought in self image, but rather a poster boy for this folly. While being employed at these retail storefronts for hell i have seen what it is that people get for each other, something written on a list, something on a registry, a meaningless trinket of lack of emotion. I have watched as a person has bought a second person a gift, right in front of them. while having the balls to say, "Now this is your Christmas gift, don't think that you get this till then."

the whole idea of gift giving is to surprise and to show that someone is worthy of deserving affection with out the required idea of earning it. But we have accustomed our self to the idea that we should recive something for no reason. this idea has spun out of control so far as to the idea of overseeing somebody buying our reward for living. Soon we will buy items for ourselves on credit, requiring our loved ones to pay us back for our own debt.
I hate the way that people push and shove and bully to get what they want. We could go back to wanting nothing but people around us, no matter what the sacrifice, and we could build community, and just be happy with those that gather near.

T.W. Clawson