There are still about 7 weeks left to Christmas and already I can’t wait for it anymore.
It’s the first time in years that I’m looking forward to Christmas. I haven’t liked that celebration with a religious touch that is completely lost in our modern world for years. Who knows what Christmas is about? The people buying presents for hundreds of euros? The people who run to the shop to exchange the presents they got? The people who associate nothing more to Christmas than the mulled wine? The business people who only see the money they can make?
I would not describe myself as being religious. I know that Christmas is no original Christian event. I’m well aware that Jesus was not born on December 25th. But still, I care about those things being respected in the sense that people understand that Christmas is not about consuming. It is about being together with the people you love. Presents just matter too much in our vision of Christmas. Telling someone you love her or him and are happy to have her/him in your life is considered less important or respectable than buying your child, nephew or god knows who else the newest incarnation of the Play Station.
Quo vadis? (John 13:36)
We are walking into the loneliness of a consumer society. We’re a society that irrevocably runs on the finishing straight towards complete self-destruction.
I’m standing right in the middle. I held my breath for the last few years, Christmas being for me one of the saddest days in the year. And now that I found back the joy of Christmas, it becomes even more clear to me that the celebration which I found so sad during all that time is really bad. There is no Christmas anymore. There are two weeks off school. There are thousands of people drinking bad tasting wine. There are millions of euros spent for things the people who get them don’t want.
Hasn’t anybody ever thought about how sad it is that the first thing people do when they open a present is to think about what they could exchange it for? Why do people still buy presents? I’m convinced the answer is as simple as it is shocking: they have to. Buying expensive presents has become a symbol of social status and society expects us to buy such inflated presents.
There is no Christmas. Not anymore. Who stole it? The shops who start their offensive ads and christmas markets earlier every year? Or the people who fall for it? I should now blame those businessmen who only want to gain money, but I don’t. At least not the most. I blame the people for their stupidity of letting themselves manipulate more and more. And it saddens me, a convinced anarchist, seeing how my vision of a world worth living in is destroyed a bit more every second by those people.
Yet again, I will smile when I see the punks accusing the people on the Christmas market of being stupid capitalists. I accuse them of doing it simply to make fun of the people. But they are still right. The rich will ignore it, but someone has to tell them they are wrong. Why not some people who think they were anarchists and call themselves by a name of which they don’t even know what it originally meant? I know it is a bias, get me one punk who can correctly explain what anarchy is and who can tell the original meaning and origin of the word ‘punk’ and I will change my mind. :-)
At least, this year, I’m looking forward to Christmas to see the friends who really matter in my life.
Thanks for showing me that Christmas can be a joyful day. Even in today’s world. You know you’re meant by this. :-)