This started as a post blasting those Politically Correct morons who are trying to get the word “Christmas” removed from public lexicon since it is supposedly offensive to groups that do not celebrate Christmas or believe in Christ. However, protesting these cliche “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” non-salutations has become equally cliche.

So what to write about? The world is still messed up. A meaningless war is being fought on page 7, and somewhere in the back pages, the destruction of thousands of lives goes on in Africa. Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) is the last bastion of unchecked governmental craziness. The Chinese are poised to take over the world and spread their trademark human rights violations over the entire globe. Day by day the American government lies to its people who sit blindly and believe everything they hear from spin magazines, while the corporate sponsors line their pockets with the blood of their children.

So what to write about? For people in New Orleans there won’t be a Christmas this year. The best present they might get is not dying of the plague, while 500 km away, their “neighbours” gorge themselves on turkey, stuffing, and network football. For people in Sri Lanka after all the aid groups have left because the shine is off the apple, there seems to be little cause to rejoice. In Subsaharan Africa, AIDS continues almost unchecked because the religious body says that condoms are sinful; said with a poorly-translated bible in one hand and a little boy in the other.

So what to write about?

Maybe what this post is supposed to be about is that this seems to be the one time of year when people at least pretend to think more about each other than their own short-term happiness, unless you could the tramplings that go on in the mall for the last-minute shoppers. If we can strip away the rampant consumerism that seems to wrap the Christmas presence, take down the shoddy plastic trees and lights and crappy music and useless toys, if we can somehow kill Santa Claus for a minute and silence his army of elven slaves, is there a meaning behind the day?

Perhaps Christmas, at its essence, is this: a love for those who you don’t even know. We talk a big game about being a global community, but maybe this is the one time of year when we begin to show caring. Christmas to me, religious history aside, is about celebrating the importance and fragility of our tenure on this planet. The religious part makes a good story to add to it, but is that really what is meant by “Christmas” anymore?

This post is starting to ramble, without really arriving at a solid point. I will close with this. If you can look past the wrapping paper, and even look past the gift, and examine why the gift was given; look past the star and the tinsel and see why on Earth someone would cut down an innocent tree; look past the fat man in the red jumpsuit and see why children put out milk and cookies; maybe then you can understand what is really, albiet covertly, being said when I wish you

Merry Christmas

- Porocrom’s Crappaper