A rchive Date
[ 27-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Humour ]
|
[WHY CHRISTMAS REALLY SUCKS ...
By LIZ BRAUN - Toronto Sun
December 13, 1998
Oh, hurrah! It's the holiday season! Let's get into the spirit early! Today's topic: Why Christmas really sucks!
Yes, gentle reader, Christmas is not the happiest time of year for many! For one thing, enthusiasm and joy must be registered everywhere!!!
There are two reasons - only two - why Christmas can be a drag for adults:
(1) You had happy Christmases as a child but as a grown up you have tried and failed to recreate that joy and
(2) You had lousy, rotten Christmases as a child but as a grown up you have tried and failed to make it any better.
Christmas complaints about loneliness or lack of money or lagging holiday spirit or whatever, are all complaints related either to memory or expectation.
As is customary in our investigation of any sensitive issue, painstaking research was conducted by consulting several recognized specialists in the Yule field and when they never returned our calls we just made everything up. How did Christmas differ in the past? Gosh! Glad you asked. This is going to be more fun than when grandpa talks about walking three miles to school through snow drifts ten feet high!
Christmas past and Christmas present - Compare ...
(1) WHAT YOU COULD ASK SANTA FOR:
PAST: A dolly. A snow sled. A pair of cowboy six-shooters, a wagon, a real baseball bat and ball, a Meccano set, a bike, or a toy truck. Socks. Underwear. Pyjamas. Puzzles. Books. Chocolate money and a tangerine in your stocking, not to be eaten until after Church. That's about all the choices there were.
The only sophisticated toy for girls was that Baker Oven Thing that really baked tiny cakes, but nobody ever actually got one except that kid who was an only child and she also had the fuzzy pink bath mat and matching toilet-seat cover and her parents drank.
PRESENT: A dolly (batteries not included) that walks, talks, wets her diapers, drinks, upchucks, says cute things, takes out the garbage, goes to school, borrows the car, leaves home for college. A pair of real six-shooters (bullets not included). A battery-powered wagon. A battery-powered tiny car. A battery-powered tiny helicopter. A dog. A pony. An elephant. Your own tiny country to run, slaves included.
Whatever. The choices are endless, and they include a raft of objects such as videos and video games and computers and computer games that didn't exist in the past. Heck, even Lego didn't exist when your Boomer parents were children.
(2) WHERE YOU COULD SHOP:
PAST: Eatons. Eatons Catalogue. Woolworths.
PRESENT: Toys R Us, ToyLand, ToyWorld, ToyUniverse, ToyTown, ToyCity, ToyPlanet, ToyPlace, ToySpot, ToyStop, ToyTerrific, Toy O Toy, ToyOrama, ToyJiminy, ToyBoy, ToyGirl, ToyTot, ToyInfant, ToyTeen, ToyBuy, ToyNGoy, Etc.
(3) WHAT WAS GOOD ABOUT CHRISTMAS DAY:
PAST: Nobody watched television.
The house was full of Christmas cards, because people still used the mail then. Your mom got up at 5 a.m. to start cooking and the house smelled of roasting turkey or goose all day, yum. Your dad made a fire in the fireplace. Nothing had batteries that anyone had forgotten to buy. There were no credit cards, so you couldn't really ruin yourself financially over one holiday. Well, you could, but it was tough.
Plastic was still sort of a newfangled thing; nobody had plastic holly or ivy or a plastic wreath (ugh) on the door and only one family in the neighbourhood had a fake tree, but they also had a Volvo. Weird.
There was no Muzak. There were no shopping malls. Christmas Carols were not yet politically incorrect.
PRESENT: That nobody gets shot.
Have a bullet-free holiday! Or not, as you choose. ]
Cross-Indexed:
|
|