Holiday love

Lighting takes on a new form, morphing into pools of contrived feeling, commercialized spirituality, and phony religiosity. Reds and greens confuse the masses as decorated ferns are mistaken for traffic lights. Malls are packed with weary shoppers who think they have the answers to the holidays - "If I can just get Mom that perfect watch, I can shut her up for another year and creep closer to that inheritance."

Shops become church, church becomes an excuse to catch some post-consumerism shuteye, and post-consumerism shuteye gets shattered by the new generation of carefully trained ingrates.

Televisions are crammed with time-honoured classics, CD players chime the latest excuses for today's stars to earn an extra buck, and post offices are jammed with, for most, the sole correspondence of the year. Supermarkets proclaim never-before-seen bargains which are seen every year on must-haves for the holiday meal.

Meanwhile, gramma is spending her last "season" in the nursing home, pondering, "Do I actually...lay here and pee on myself, or get up and pee," weighing the pros and cons of such an action [thank you Margaret Cho]. Disturbing footage plays during the commercials of holiday movies, attempting to illuminate the hearts of potential donors, pleading for assistance, hoping that viewers will realize the true giving ideals of these times and open their wallets and hearts for just a moment, even if it is for only this time of the year.

But who cares if gramma fades to dust, at least there is one less trip to make once a year....and who cares about the kids on the television commercials, they're just made up by Hollywood airbrushing...and nobody likes Uncle Jim the mental patient anyways. Who cares about the season of giving, as long as there's a new gadget on the list that will hopefully be under the carefully crafted spruce.

All I want for Christmas is...for those annoying lights to go out already...for the stores to be less crowded so I can take advantage of the day-after sales...and for gramma to survive just one more year, maybe that will give her enough time to write her ungrateful children out of the will....