Holidays....

If you know me, you know that I am not religious. This has nothing to do with my point. My point is this, capitalism and greed has transformed nearly every holiday into a mass merchandising nightmare. If you don't have children, you probably only groan when Valentine's Day comes around. If you have children, you understand the ridiculous ritualistic and abusive shopping you must do in order to not be a jerk to your kids.

1. Christmas - might as well start with the worst one. A Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, he was not born on this day, but as most Christian holidays were placed on top of Pagan holidays to get those damn pagans in line with Christianity, this is on December 25th. What began as a festival celebrating the Winter Solstice with drinking, eating, and tons of sex (tell me this doesn't sound like more fun?), has evolved into a trial of being the best shopper. What does this have to do with Jesus? Absolutely nothing. The majority of Christians in the US don't even go to church on Christmas. Even non-Christians tend to celebrate this one, just so that their kids don't hate them.
2. Valentine's Day - celebration of love. Origins of this day are arguably difficult to trace, but according to the Catholic Church, it is to honor St. Valentine. He was a Bishop that performed secret weddings during a Roman ban on marriage. He was supposedly killed on February 14th. So far so good. Love & marriage. Capitalism has turned this into another disaster of buying the right kind of flowers, chocolates and diamonds. Gotta have the diamonds right? At some point can we agree that gifts do not equal love?
3. St. Patrick's Day - celebrating St. Patrick (obvious from the name right?). What I have learned is that everything I thought I knew about St. Patrick was completely wrong. There were no snakes and he wasn't Italian or Irish. He was actually British and he was taken into slavery, which is how he ended up in Ireland. He escaped eventually, and he began a supremely successful campaign to spread Christianity in Ireland. That's it. He ruined the goings on of the pagans. The green stuff? That's pretty much just because he was in Ireland. The drinking? I'm fairly certain it's the same reason. The pinching if you don't wear green? I'm pretty sure that's because people are jerks.
4. Easter - a celebration of Christ's resurrection. I'm fairly certain there weren't any giant rabbits dropping off chocolate eggs during this whole time. This is another case of Catholic's hating on the pagans. This was a pagan holiday to celebrate fertility in the beginning of Spring. Again, food, drink, sex and fun. The rabbit and eggs symbolize fertility. The chocolate? I think that symbolizes the sex. Somehow we lost the drinking part. What is the day now? A day to get your children to be gluttonous on candy and eggs. Oh, and now they've added toys to the basket, because we weren't buying enough crap.
5. Columbus Day - to celebrate the discovery of America. This sounds above board right? Well, when you actually read history and don't just listen to the falsehoods purported in the text books we get in school, you learn that he almost discovered America. He was also a major asshole and killed many people via disease, slavery and just plain old mass murder. Estimates show that he killed more people than Pol Pot and Hitler combined. So lets have a Parade!!! Italian-Americans fight to keep this holiday, because those damned Irish have one!
6. Halloween - dress up and get candy. Again, pagan day to honor the dead. The Catholic church tried to stop this one and failed. That's why All Saints Day is November 1st. So now we dress up in costumes of any kind (zombies and vampires are kind of dead right?) and knock on doors to get free candy. Any other day of the year, this is totally disallowed. Don't take candy from strangers kids, except on Halloween - the get as much as you can! Oh, and don't tell me you didn't despise those neighbors that spend enough to get the kind of candy you find acceptable.

Anyhow... Happy Easter everyone.