Every year I feel compelled to write something about the holiday season. Usually it’s an inarticulate screech. Very hard to capture in mere words. It’s not that I bear any particular ill-will toward my fellow man, although god knows there’s more than enough ill-will to go around these days. Nope…for me the growing anxiety and impending eruption starts sometime in November when I inadvertently catch myself humming along to some canned musik version of a christmas tune that has sneaked into my head at one of the citadels of stupid shopping malls. I shake myself like a wet dog and try to get rid of it but it only makes it worse, until I can get at least a block away from the place. I always wonder if those old 1960’s paranoid fantasies about hidden subliminal messages (like Led Zeppelin lyrics played backwards…hmmm!) are true and that these happy little christmas tunes don’t contain devilish demands that we should buy…buy…buy. Even if they don’t, the conspiracy of baggism has already started and shop windows shriek at us fro mid November…but Oh!!! even bloody worse. “Black Friday”.
What the hell is that? I thought Black Friday ought to be something remembering disaster…like several ships sinking in Lake Erie on the same day in 1916 maybe…or ten thousand trees falling down because of a flying saucer crash…or the day the zombies arrived (No…of course they didn’t.) But no…Black Friday is when who have just given thanks for being able to afford turkey dinner with friends or family or both…rush out to the local stores at some ridiculous hour in the morning to await the opening of the doors to OZ. Then they trample each other, rip sleeves and stomp toes and elbow old folks (What are they doing there?) to get at the “bargains”.
Now, something needs to be said about all those “bargains”. Somebody explained that Black Friday is when people buy stuff for themselves and Christmas is when they buy stuff for others…Seemed logical I suppose.
All this excitement and anxiety about consuming has only the tiniest upside for me. It’s that for a few hours we can forget about the horrendous misery that’s happening around the world. It’s as if no internal act of will can turn off the madness and we need this shopping adrenaline to get some relief.
Yes I will…Yes I will go shopping for christmas things. Maybe not for a week or two though and I’ll try to remember my earplugs when I happen to go to the mall for any reason…because I really fucking hate “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”.
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