Merry Xmas Inc.

(click on photo for full glory- this is my xmas card next year)

Xmas, the annual x-ray of our consumer society.
Hardened cynic that I am, this year still had a few shocks for me.
The universal media adoption of the Black Friday tag for the day after Thanksgiving for one. A phrase more redolent of ruined traders leaping from on high than sugarplums, and an interesting burp from the collective subconscious of our superficial and unreflective corporate media.

Then came the wave of BIG SALES starting at 4am(!) on BLACK FRIDAY.
A few years back there was an SNL skit making fun of the Mach 3 razor. If three blades is better than two, then surely 4 is better than 3, 5 is better than 4, etc etc. (proof that satire is a tougher gig than it used to be, not long after the Quattro four blade razor came out, follows by the Fusion five blader).
This is the same kind of deal. If you're going to open at 4am, why not go to the logical extreme and just open at one after midnight on Thanksgiving day, like those nerd-friendly late night movie premiers.
I fear the first THANKSGIVING DAY Christmas sale is an inevitability.

The third was a wave of ads (Best Buy being the most egregious offender)offering up a corporate consumer fantasia of flatscreens & console games as a replacement for the messy complexity of family and friends, useful only as cardboard cutout gift-targets, something to be knocked over by the tee-shirt cannon. The most awful of these had a family doing a drive-by of Grandma, pulling up to the curb for a quick, grudging wave before peeling out for home, because, you see, they couldn't open their techno-wonder gifts until after the boring, obligatory family visit.

It was supposed to be funny, I guess.

That the desire for something more persists in the face of this corporate assault is heartening.
The annual screenings of It's a Wonderful Life, a socialist parable that loses none of its potency when sponsored by Pepsi & Ford. Dickens's savage attack on unfettered capitalism A Christmas Carol is a point of light in the commercialized darkness.

But the value of the season has to be mined by hand.
I had a good run when I lived with Bobo years ago, we'd throw together an Orphan's Christmas at Little Havana, which was a stopgap measure but one that brought me back to the holiday. The past few years we've carved out a cozy spot with with my bro n' sis in law and the Fiend. We take care of the family obligation stuff earlier in the week then bunker down with them for a Christmas Day chock full of those old timey virtues our culture pretends to celebrate while spiking the eggnog with rat poison.

This year I'm making overnight waffles for breakfast. On the drink menu are mimosas, French 75's & pomegranate cosmopolitans along with the de riguer mulled cider & nog. We'll screen our traditional holiday lineup with a few supplements. We'll all watch the Fiend open her presents & go crazy, we'll take naps, Tim will grill some sort of poultry for dinner to pair with Teresa's garlic mashed potatos & we'll all eventually fade out absolutely sated in body and spirit.

My christmas wish is that everyone's holiday be as full of joy and goodness as mine, shining like firelight though a living room window into the cold outdoors.