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Monday 9 November 2009

Why you should never trust my opinion on anything:


In "conversation*" with the BFG:

"Christmas has become completely hollow and meaningless to me, it is purely a materialistic ritual where we all go mad and feel so much pressure to buy each other loads of crap, and we are supposed to enjoy time with family, but we have to fulfill these rituals of eating only the correct things and doing the correct things and spending unreasonalbe amounts of money and eating unpleasurable amounts of food.

There is no meaning to Christmas except for the few religious people out there, even people of other religions celebrate the material gift-giving part of Christmas, which proves that the essential celebration of Jesus's birth has been lost to the new religion of capitalism. It think this is what Nietzsche meant about nihilism, carrying out empty rituals for which the meaning has been lost, except for the tree, my family always enjoyed decorating the tree, hey, maybe we should buy a tree this year, we have never bought a tree, it could be fun, it will make our flat look cheerful, and we could buy one of those advent calendars, those were quite fun..."


Um.


* more like a monologue really. Yes, I really do speak like this sometimes. Poor POOR BFG, how does he survive? He does seem quite fond of his earplugs.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Xmas, all the decorations make the room so pretty, and you get a nice meal, we dont stick to "traditional" meals we make something special but it could be anything. And I only sometimes buy expensive gifts, and sometimes I dont give people gifts, so financially it works out :) and I love the cracker part, sitting with those silly hats on our heads, my family isnt christian except for one person (not me) but I love celebrating it. its the 1 time a year we have a ritual so its nice, doesnt matter to me if it has meaning or not, to me the meaning is a family event and quality time and a nice experience.

Tamara said...

Hehehe... I too have monologues that turn into arguments with myself. I think I need TSC around to witness which side of an argument I eventually settle on ;-)

SonnyVsDan said...

you hate it all... but you still buy the christmas tree, decorations and advent calendar?

um..

6000 said...

Meh. Sometimes you can't fight the system. Go for it - enjoy the dark, the cold, the atmosphere. It's a bit more difficult here when we're stuck trying to eat a 3 course meal at 7pm and 33^C

Damaria Senne said...

the spending for present kinda stresses me, though I don't buy a lot of expensive presents. I just have a big family.
But I also enjoy Christmas. It's the one time when all my siblings and their spouses and kids congregate at my mother's house, and we cook way too much food and chat and hang out together. No particular menu; just something special.

Helen said...

Nice monologue, I do that too! Although the poor lizards don't gt headphones!

And you get to have a cold Christmas! Enjoy it! And know that by easter the christmas music being pipes over every available speaker system will have worked its way out of your head.

po said...

Anon: I think I have a different opinion about Christmas every hour, so don't worry about me! My scrooge moments are balanced by moments of just loving it. I do get disgusted by the blatant capitalism of it all, and the frenzy people go into, starting in October. That will always shock me. But then I think of my mom who was not religious at all but made Christmas so special because she wanted us kids to have a fun magical time. She went to so much effort with putting food out for Santa and the deer, giving us stockings, and just generally making it a nice time. The presents were nice, but definitely not the only thing. Then I think Xmas is cool, and it can stay. The tree was always a big thing in our house, it was ugly and plastic and had been in the family for generations as had the decorations, but we loooooved decorating the damn tree. And the advent calendars used to make me so excited, but we never had the chocolate ones, I used to get excited over the picture I got. Haha I wonder if kids would get excited aout a picture now?

Tamara: I think that is exactly why I need BFG too. I am not sure he agreed to this in our contract though ;)

sonnyvsdan: exxaaaaactly. Welcome to my brain, where opinions change every minute.

6000: my dad used to fight it every year, refuse to give presents, complain about the extravagance etc, but even he occasionally buys a gift now. That freaks me out. If he is doing it, I sure as hell canot refuse to!
and 31 degrees is a normal christmas, I associate Christmas with sitting in the pool, not in the cold, and I never had a problem eating all that food, although I did often sink to the bottom of the pool!

Damaria: the buying presents stresses me out a lot because I am no good at thinking what to get so I overcompensate by buying way too much. I think I am too self-absorbed to be good at guessing what people want. Some women I know are thinking about gifts to get others all year round. Me = way too self absorbed for that!

Helen: you mean you speak your monologues in Lizard??? Hectic, my admiration for you just hit the roof ;)

There is no point having a cold Christmas. It is miserable and... cold.

The only good thing about having a Christmas in the Northern hemisphere would be if it snowed, therebye fulfilling those years of madness in the Southern hemisphere where we sang carols about white Christmasses and gave cards with snow scenes, while melting in the swimming pool. So far it has never snowed on Christmas day here, which is highly annoying!

EEbEE said...

Even though my family are Muslims, we have always had a get together on this day. I guess it's easier because the entire country has taken off as well.

Geez my gran and mum even make a massive Christmas pudding each year.

No presents though, just family time. (BTW Jesus is hugely significant to us Muslims as well...)

po said...

EEbEE, thats true, but it always puzzled me when my Hindu friends and my Jewish friends had Christmas celebrations of some sort. But it is just as weird as me celebrating it, cos I am not Christian either. But I guess previous generations of my family were...