Thursday, November 30, 2006

Sign of the times

Outside my office (at and undisclosed super-secret location) is a bulletin board where I have posted a flier from the Adbuster's folks about "Buy Nothing Christmas." The ad has a picture of Santa who, posed like a Buddha, is levitating above the words "Rise Above It/Buy Nothing Christmas." Personally, I have no intention of buying absolutely nothing, but I thought the folks who are campaigning against our gluttonous society deserved a small amount of space to state their case.
It was interesting, therefore, to hear the following monologue outside my office today:

"Buy Nothing Christmas?! Rise Above It?! What does that mean? ! Are they boycotting Christmas or something?!"

Ultimately this person proves the Buy Nothing Group's parsimonious point: Christmas has been converted wholesale into a commercial holiday where it is not just connoted with buying goods, but is denoted by egregious spending, excluding any other trifling religious significance of a person who called for disciples to give up all their goods and follow him. For the above commentator Christmas is only about buying things. To not buy things means that Christmas itself is being boycotted. Christ himself is not being celebrated. God is being denied. You are, in fact, an evil atheist if won't buy anything at Christmas time.

I guess they don't show the Charlie Brown Christmas Special any more, eh?

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:30 PM

    Preach it, brother!

    JT

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  2. Anonymous2:08 PM

    So does this mean you aren't buying me a Video iPod this year?

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  3. Just Thursday I was admiring said levitating Santa outside of the undislosed secret location. I knew it had to be yours.

    BTW I heard an interview on NPR with the composer of the Charlie Brown music and they did indeed replay it this week; thank God, if gauged by the number of cars out tonight, no one seems to have bought into Linus' heresy about too much commercialism.

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  4. Anonymous1:03 AM

    You know, for a thumb-sucking, blanket-havin little kid, Linus was a bit ahead of his time, wasn't he?

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  5. Let us give thanks to our lord and savior, Santa Claus.

    ReplyDelete