Full Stop.
Dec. 25th, 2013 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogTheologically, Christmas is supposed to be about beginnings, and in and of itself, it is. The birth of the Child, the spirit of giving.
Yet today, I reflect on the meaning of the day, in the context of the other 364 surrounding it, and I see it, not as a First Day, but as a Last.
Christmas is all we've got left.
For these sacred 24 hours, and anywhere from six to twelve the Eve before, the Machine comes to a halt. Cinemas, Chinese restaurants and the occasional Quickie Mart (for those essential forgotten batteries or $4.00 half gallon of "recent vintage" milk) are the only cogs running today. The stores have been Silent since last Night. All is calm, all is bright.
But the Masters of the Universe cannot be happy. Sales were sluggish this season, even as they goosed the gears to advance the whole retail orgy by a day and thereby take another piece of Thanksgiving from us. They're still paying a full 1/31 of a month's rent today, plus heat and light, and not getting anything for it. There are gift cards to be redeemed! (They don't boost bottom lines until redeemed, since each $50 on the income side instantly generates a $50 liability for the unpurch-ed merch.) Ugly sweaters to be returned! What, you people need a whole day to open those pressies and guzzle that ham? Not even the churches have anything going on today (unless Christmas falls on a Sunday, and even that is generally low-key compared to the Christmas Eve Evangasms of modern Christianity).
Probably the only thing that's held them back this long is the fear of offending the Hobby Lobby lobby that they've co-opted into their War on Christian Values- you know, the one fought in the name of their fake "Happy Holidays" tripe. So it will come quietly, like a thief in the night. Some rogue will be first- a teetering-on-bankruptcy national chain, or that year's victim of a Tarjay-ish Black Friday fraud, to swing open its doors on Christmas Night as a "thank you" to its "guests." Media-ites and ministers will grumble, but sales will set instant records- after all, when you're starting at zero, there's nowhere to go but up. And then the rest of the Military Retail Complex will fall in behind it, purely as a defensive measure, mind you- we didn't WANT to do this, but X-Mart made us- and then the Mickey D's and Outbacks will need to open their doors to feed the throngs, and the supermarkets will fall in step to not lose out, and before you know it, Christmas Day will turn into Christmas Morning and maybe, if we're lucky, an early afternoon.
And with God as my witness, I will stay away- as I always have from Black Friday, long before anyone outside retail inner circles even knew to call it that. Because if Heaven can wait one day a year, the monsters of merchandise can take a day off, too.
Yet today, I reflect on the meaning of the day, in the context of the other 364 surrounding it, and I see it, not as a First Day, but as a Last.
Christmas is all we've got left.
For these sacred 24 hours, and anywhere from six to twelve the Eve before, the Machine comes to a halt. Cinemas, Chinese restaurants and the occasional Quickie Mart (for those essential forgotten batteries or $4.00 half gallon of "recent vintage" milk) are the only cogs running today. The stores have been Silent since last Night. All is calm, all is bright.
But the Masters of the Universe cannot be happy. Sales were sluggish this season, even as they goosed the gears to advance the whole retail orgy by a day and thereby take another piece of Thanksgiving from us. They're still paying a full 1/31 of a month's rent today, plus heat and light, and not getting anything for it. There are gift cards to be redeemed! (They don't boost bottom lines until redeemed, since each $50 on the income side instantly generates a $50 liability for the unpurch-ed merch.) Ugly sweaters to be returned! What, you people need a whole day to open those pressies and guzzle that ham? Not even the churches have anything going on today (unless Christmas falls on a Sunday, and even that is generally low-key compared to the Christmas Eve Evangasms of modern Christianity).
Probably the only thing that's held them back this long is the fear of offending the Hobby Lobby lobby that they've co-opted into their War on Christian Values- you know, the one fought in the name of their fake "Happy Holidays" tripe. So it will come quietly, like a thief in the night. Some rogue will be first- a teetering-on-bankruptcy national chain, or that year's victim of a Tarjay-ish Black Friday fraud, to swing open its doors on Christmas Night as a "thank you" to its "guests." Media-ites and ministers will grumble, but sales will set instant records- after all, when you're starting at zero, there's nowhere to go but up. And then the rest of the Military Retail Complex will fall in behind it, purely as a defensive measure, mind you- we didn't WANT to do this, but X-Mart made us- and then the Mickey D's and Outbacks will need to open their doors to feed the throngs, and the supermarkets will fall in step to not lose out, and before you know it, Christmas Day will turn into Christmas Morning and maybe, if we're lucky, an early afternoon.
And with God as my witness, I will stay away- as I always have from Black Friday, long before anyone outside retail inner circles even knew to call it that. Because if Heaven can wait one day a year, the monsters of merchandise can take a day off, too.