I'm Done With Christmas

[Lightning Rod]

I'm Done With Christmas
for release 12-28-06
Washington DC


If anyone ever gives me another Christmas present, I'm sending it back. I'm through with Christmas. It's a commercial hoax.

Every Day I give to the ones I love. I don't need a religion or the 'shopping season' to make me do that. The obligatory giving of gifts takes not only the joy but also the meaning out of giving.

Wrapping paper is the symbol of it. I hate wrapping paper with its relentless cheerfulness. We kill trees in order to make wrapping paper which glazed-eyed consumers buy. They then wrap up useless gifts, some scented candles or a gee-gaw of some sort, that is destined to gather dust on someone's shelf. Then the giftee will tear the paper off and throw it away. It's almost as good a marketing idea as the Arm & Hammer campaign that demonstrates how to buy a box of their baking soda and put it in your refrigerator for 2 weeks (to absorb troublesome odors, we are told) and then pour it down your drain so you can buy another box. Brilliant marketing, but like wrapping paper, it's the picture of futility and useless waste.

No more Christmas for me! I don't need Macy's or Walmart or Kmart or any other kind of mart to tell me when to celebrate the Holy Spirit or to show the ones I love that I care for them and remember them. I try to do that every day.

Let me put this another way. If the holiday of Christmas is about peace on earth, good will to man, etc. then wouldn't you imagine that the money spent on wrapping papers and the vapid gifts that they secret would go a long way toward ending the misery in Darfur? Just a thought.

If you simply Have to give Christmas presents, the best possible gift is hard currency, green money. It spends anywhere. The recipient can get anything he wants or needs. It comes already wrapped in green, which I am told is a Christmas color. It's not one of those gifts that you don't need and will have to be stored until it is thrown away or something that doesn't fit and will have to be returned or a gift card that locks you in to one vendor. It's cash. What's so hard to understand about this? No wrapping paper required.

The Poet's Eye is glad to see Christmas in the rear-view mirror. New Year's is much easier to deal with. The gifts are eighty proof.


All I want for Christmas
is my two front teeth,
my two front teeth,
see my two front teeth.

Gee, if I could only
have my two front teeth,
then I could wish you
"Merry Christmas!"

[mtmynd]

Give the man a '"Hell Yeah!!" I'm with you, L'Rod....

(except for the kids - isn't Xmas for them... a celebration for imagination..?)

[Zlatko Waterman]

Good sentiment, all the way.

The tradition of a winter festival is as old as civilized man, however.

I wouldn't give that up, personally.

And the kids, as mtmynd says, get to crank themselves up over Christmas. I DO wish they could crank themselves up over reading a book, however.

I bought a book that made me fall in love with reading when I was 12 for myself this Christmas:

SEVEN SCIENCE-FICTION NOVELS OF H.G. Wells.

That was nearly half a century ago, and the infection is still circulating in me.

A species of masturbation, no doubt: buy yourself a Christmas present.

Before this comment gets any more Freudian, I'll quit.

--Z

[stilltrucking]

beautiful pagan winter solstice celebrations
"friends make gifts, gifts make friends" West Africa

some ugly solstice celebrations
saturanlia human sacrifice

we lie to children just to see the magic in their eyes
I believe in santa
tooth fairy too.

potlach
the whole beserk homo economicus reminds me of the tribes of the pacific north west
yearly orgy of gifts
the more you can give away
the higher your status totem
thingy.


nice eye clay
sorry for the drunken stoned ramble
eighty proof
gift

happy healthy new year amigos

"like a mirror in a barbershop"
hell of a nice whatchamahcallit
simile?

[jimboloco]

happy feast!
celebrations of merry pranksters
and under the table pirate entrepreneurs
and holly and such
blessed by sunshine and balm

We continue to look forward to the coming year with renewed hopefulness and vigor. Peace and goodwill to all. Suzie and Jimbo, XMAS ‘06
Oh yeah we saw a reindeer with shades playin a peppermint guitar!

reindeer with green shades playin the peppermint guitar
wants to bop her hoppin hoofs on the rooftops of the world.

[Lightning Rod]

Cec, Z-ko, Truck, Jimbo,

I don't need Christmas to tell you how much you all mean to me. You are the reasons that I continue with this madness.

I would love to be able to see you all on New Year's and drink some bad whiskey and play some worse music.

[judih]

hey, L-rod, wish i could be there.

over here, in the wastelands, xmas shows up in a garish mini-version for a mini-moment and then it passes like a raincloud over the desert.

Yes, we have televised midnight Papal mass and we have Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) as a neighbour, but still the commerical thing seems to barely touch us.

Still, a light, in the darkness of short days, is always welcome. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Without the xmas stuff you describe, we wouldn't have you!
So, yeah.

happy 2007.

[jimboloco]

Still, a light, in the darkness of short days, is always welcome. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Without the xmas stuff you describe, we wouldn't have you!

mercy what a loaded statement!
Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) in now in Israeli territory.
or part of it, behind the wall,
The Christian congregation lived among the Palestinians,
for what reason I don't know,
nor do I know if any of this is accurate,
so now there is peace whereas before there were attacks,
but the congregation can't get to their old church,
¿Quién sabe?

happy feast
scrawled from a Rembrandt etching of the last supper,
Jesus went down like Saddamn,
mercy, for all the saints and sinners, amen,
also, man LRodny,
there was this old Swiss artist, Jost Amman,
500 years ago,
or so,
did this print of Saint Nicholas
as the patron saint of gluttony,
man I drew a large pastel drawing of that crazy joker
riding a donkey with bells and antlers,
winter branches stuck up thru more bells wrapped around the jolly beast's head,
and on those branches hung sausages and fishes and pretzels,
and the glutton his jolly self,
a rotund fellow with a roaring white beard and mane,
a huge red coat with white collars and trim, and hat the same,
hoisting up a mug of good cheer,
donkey and man laughing and jingling and prancing along,
through the forest,
yes, mercy,
I can't find it now, the print,
I think it was a fine woodblock print,
discovered it in a psychic bookstore or the library in Shreveport,
this old bookstore run by an old couple,
books for Merlin,
old print books,
bought some nooks by the old masters,
drawings and prints, studied them lived with them for awhile,.
then they bought them back when I split,
anyhow, this drawing , in red white green and silver bells and the ruddy brown of the donkey and hoisted ruddy cup of good cheer.
mercy, I gave it to Joyce in east Texas, Longview,
it adorned her bedroom wall,
she kept it up there forever,
gone gone gone,
not a tragedy cause I'd love to redo it, I mean, from the print,
black and white,
and I can't find the print anymore.
I looked for it in the fine arts section of the Tampa libes,
nope,
Googled and Yahood, nope
nutz I know they're out there somewhere
waiting to make a comeback, mercy!

[the flaming ace]

god bless us, god bless us all!

[judih]

interesting points, jim.
St. Nick as a glutton! Why not? metaphor being what it is.
Overdoing generousity, spending, eating and partying during the darkest part of the year is right there in rhythm with our earliest human pursuits during mid-winter.

About Beit Lechem, which means 'House of Bread' in Hebrew, and 'House of Meat' in Arabic but probably stems from a much earlier word. "However, it seems likely that both meanings have been retrofitted onto what was originally the House of Lachma, the Mesopotamian god of fertility." source:http://wikitravel.org/en/Bethlehem
It's in the West Bank which is now 'occupied territory' but fully administered by the Palestinian Authority.
In short, those who want to enter must pass checkpoints on the Israeli and Palestinian side and must possess special entry passports.

Very different from the days when it was nothing to pop over for the best falafel imaginable.

May those days return. Peace on earth.

[Arcadia]

sad...you don't have your front theeth anymore, l/rod..???

(yes, I also hate to envolver gifts!)

Feliz año nuevo!!!

[jimboloco]

cita Scotch
some kind of gaucho beverage, i presume

nice to hear the historia of Bethlehem
would like to learn more

yes you must pop over for felafels
why not?

lrod quiere nada mas que two front teeth
and i'm halffast,
gassed, masked by little blue pills
beyond redemption save for grace
and unanswered contention
waiting for a comeback
in the meantime
will err on the side of laughs

While Bethlehem's souq is no match for Jerusalem's, it is much less touristy and the sellers are less aggressive.

In peaceful times, Bethlehem's traders do a roaring trade in souvenirs for pilgrims to the town.

happy feast
aid mubarak
or so they saydown at the Moroccan pavilian
at Epcot
they be Mo Rockin, belly dancing
with the little girls joining in, all fun and family,
festive,
where are the Israelis during the spring food and wine festivals?
had jelapa corn bread from Coluimbia
with cheese and hot chocolate
mercy
you get high llike you were arriba en las montañas

[Zlatko Waterman]

"A light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it . . . "

( JOHN)

Sometimes it's pretty difficult, or impossible to find.

I have been reading "Riverbend", writing out of her occupied homeland on the subject of BAGHDAD BURNING.

And we Americans are the occupiers.

( link to volume 2 of her blog-book):

http://www.amazon.com/Baghdad-Burning-I ... F8&s=books

An eloquent testimonial.

There's a good review of both her volumes in the current NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.

New Years cheers and a toast of Sierra Nevada pale ale ( Northern California beverage . . .) to all!!


--Z

[Axanderdeath]

I read it. give me some fucking stars! first thing I read by anyone else for a while. I too dis like christmas.

but this was nothing new.

yeah fuck christmas it is a load of crap before it was what is is now...