I knew years ago that the celebration of Christmas had taken a turn for the worst and was orbiting the drain in what little humility it had left. This year, my fears were confirmed and I was thrown into a fit of despair for what little dignity was left for the multitude of holidays celebrated during the winter season, when I first became witness to the Virigin Mobile’s “Chrismahanukwanzakah” celebration, in an effort to extort more money from American debt-holders.
If you’re morbidly curious, and/or easily offended, be sure to check out the spirit of the commercial at www.chrismahanukwanzakah.com. You’ll be benightedly pissed off by lyrics such as “Whose faith is the right one… It’s anybody’s guess… What matters most is camera phones for $20 less.” What we’ve been told for generations, that the spirit of the season is about helping others and spreading joy and love, is, apparently, hopelessly false, and that our mission during this joyous holiday season, regardles of our beliefs, is to become the “special prison friend” of big business. Obviously, Virgin mobile doesn’t give an airborne rodentia’s posterior what you celebrate or if there is any sanctity or dignity left in it. They just want to capitalize off it so that you’ll buy more completely unnecessary consumer electronics. Thank you, Virgin Mobile, for murdering what little happiness and awe-inspiring spirit the holiday season had left.
I was remorsefully close to giving-up and giving the world the collective finger over this whole bit of nonsense, when I heard about the concept of Festivus, a holiday “for the rest of us,” a holiday popularized by the show Seinfeld, created by a family member of one of the writers of said show.
Instead of a tree, the central ornament of this holiday is a bare aluminum pole, with little or nothing adorning it. Instead of presents, the family engages in an “airing of grievences” against each other, letting all of the disappointment out into the open in a rousing bout of family-directed catharsis, instead of what we’re used to: such as the tension and nervousness about who will first break the ice about Uncle Jack and Aunt Frank, Mother’s new “operation”, or the fact that your deadbeat half-brother is now semi-permanently affixed to the couch and mooching what little remains of your inheritance.
Frank Costanza, the character on the show Seinfeld who “created” the holiday, explains to Kramer that the idea came to him after getting into a fight in a department store over the last of a particular toy doll that “There must be a better way.”
Perhaps, in a rather disturbing way, this joke-turned-reality will be the “better way” for millions of Americans during one of the most stressful, over-commercialized, and inflated months of the Gregorian calendar.
When I discovered how popular and well-celebrated holiday it had become, I began to achieve a rather evil grin, increasing in popularity amongst those of us sick and tired with the “Christmas (TM)” season. It’s a sad state of affairs when a fake holiday, created primarily as a joke, becomes the Anti-Christmas to a large portion of the populace’s derision with more traditional, and infinitely more corporately twisted celebrations infecting what used to be our spiritually directed and joyous times. Here’s to hoping that Festivus, our new “Anti-Christmas”, isn’t targeted by the destructive corporate nature so prevalent in our American society.
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