Aslaug's Axe Shed

In this time of year, we are expected to be nice to one another. At least in those parts of the world that celebrate the birth of a certain kid roughly two thousand years ago. We’re brought up in the belief that at this time of year, whether one believes in the Christian fundamental beliefs or not, we are to be decent to one another, give each other presents and generally celebrate the great God of Crass Commercialism ™.

Does that sound cynical?

It’s intended to. Last year I believe I ranted about the fact that we now spend twenty five percent of the year preparing for, celebrating or getting over Christmas. This year, the big malls started putting up their Christmas decorations the SECOND WEEKEND OF OCTOBER.

Kindly consider that idiocy for a while. On the thirteenth of October, the first automated plastic Santa Clauses were waving at people while they listened to ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Last Christmas’, already slowly starting to show the early signs of Christmas-stress. The last of these things will be taken down somewhere around mid-to-late January when the post-Christmas sale ends.

These are the days where I am truly a ‘happy heathen’. I don’t have to get caught up in this damned nonsense year in and year out. I can observe it from the outside and see it for the abject idiocy that it truly is.

Yesterday, Aramis Dagaz asked me about a tidbit of historical information. He asked if Christmas celebrations weren’t much the same during the 19th century as they are today. Bless him for asking but I nearly spat my tea all over my monitor at the question. I don’t know for sure but I suspect he’s got some story in mind that involves Christmas. Maybe a short-story or something, involving his own character in a 19th century situation, around Christmas.

I think I burst his bubble quite badly by insisting that no, Christmas in the 19th century was very little like Christmas today. Back then, Christmas was much more a religious festival, with several services or masses being held (depending on your brand of Christianity) and the whole thing about the obscene amounts of food and gift-giving was largely unknown. In absolute upper crust homes…the elite of society…you would find great feasts, comparable to what we see today. But we are talking about one or two percent of the population of any given, western country. In other places, you’d make do with considerably less food. The idea of gift-giving is relatively new as well and of course, Santa Claus in the guise we know him as today…big, red-clothed, bearded and excessively jolly hohoho-fellow…was invented by none other than the Coca Cola company in the early 20th century. Sad, but unfortunately true.

I don’t know for sure, but I think I may have upset his writing plans a bit by that, because he did ask again if at least one couldn’t compare Christmas in upper class homes to something present day-like then. I had to tell him that apart from the huge amounts of food, no. One can’t. The spirit of Christmas was very different then. Hell, in most homes, the days of Christmas were working days like any other and presents was something that happened to other people.

Aramis, having the imagination of a poet on amphetamin, is probably going to find a way out of that problem in no time.

But as I started out writing…this is the season to be nice to one another, let alone jolly…

Despite that, people are not particularly nice to one another. Look at the statistics. Christmas is high season for divorces. At  no time of the year are married couples as hard on one another as around Christmas and of course, the annual Christmas luncheons is high season for infidelity. People get roaringly drunk and have it on with their boss in the xerox-room, in order to further their careers. I wish that was a joke…but sadly it isn’t. Two days in a row, a week or so back, newspapers here ran articles about how that might actually help further one’s career. They practically endorsed it.

It’s enough to turn a person bitter, if you ask me.

Christmas is also the time of year where poverty and wealth is displayed most glaringly. Because of the God of Crass Commercialism (I don’t know what he looks like but somehow I imagine him as a cross between Adam Smith, Bill Gates and George W. Bush…which is enough to keep me awake at night in terror of falling asleep), we spend sickening amounts of greenbacks on plastic gadgets that break after two uses and sweaters so awful you can see the horror in the eyes of the recipient as he or she opens the package with a wholly unconvincing “Oh my that’s JUST what I wanted!”

At the same time, we still have people who can’t celebrate Christmas. In Denmark alone, ninety thousand children with poor parents can look forward to no christmas celebration at all. Mind you…we have about five point five million people in this country altogether…so ninety thousand is a large number. It’s also twice as large as before our current government came to power, but that’s an entirely different issue.

Cheerful newsreaders tell us that this year, Danes will spend on average 1000 kroner on Christmas presents…

That’s about 200 dollars, for you Americans to have something to compare with.

That doesn’t sound like all that much, but let’s take into consideration that this includes ALL Danes.  From craddle to grave. Even those so old they have no family members left to give presents to. Even those so young that their only desires in life are a dry bum and a pacifier that doesn’t taste like poo!

Even those who have to have others buy their presents FOR them.

Even those too poor to celebrate Christmas at all.

Suddenly, at least in my mind, the picture looks different. Suddenly I’m seeing consumerism at its ugliest, where people stress out so badly that heart-attack rates are exploding at every hospital in the country, and where people rush to and fro with bewildered looks on their faces, akin to the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, worrying himself sick that ‘he won’t make it, he won’t make it’…

Merry f*cking Christmas everyone…

And that’s not all. Every year at Christmas-time, I start looking at the news from overseas with a certain amount of horrified fascination and dread, mixed into one. Every year, we get stories of Americans who snap under the shadow of great Christmas Tree and run bonkers. And when I say bonkers, I mean bonkers.

Christmas Shoppers getting gunned down by a young man, twisted and sick on his soul, who had just been fired from his job at McDonalds? A guy with so little prospect in life that losing employment as a burger-turner meant that his life was effectively over as he saw it?

And yesterday, a young man of 24, walking into a Church missionary center, gunning down people left and right, apparently out of sheer hatred of Christianity?

What a Christmas for those bereaved, eh? And how are those people ever going to be able to celebrate Christmas in the future again? They’ll be reminded every year of what they lost, and how they were bereaved…and how senseless it was.

‘Guns do not kill people, people kill people’ is an oft-heard slogan for the gun-lobby.

It’s nonsense wrapped up in an undeniable truth. No gun suddenly sprouts legs and a malevolent mind of its own, sneaking down to the local school to blow away 20 innocent kids with their entire lives in front of them. No…guns don’t kill people. But guns give people an extremely efficient method for killing people. Far more efficient than anything else humanity has ever invented.

A good friend of mine, whom I shall leave unnamed here, believes that the answer is to arm -everyone- from childhood to grave. That every single human being should carry weapons. That teachers in the classroom should have a gun laying on the table, so that every would-be killer would know that it’d be folly because they’d be met with lethal force.

Tuition at gunpoint. There’s a thought.

“Oh, so your DOG ate your HOMEWORK you say?? *BLAM BLAM BLAM*”

While this is a twisted example, who would keep a teacher from picking up the gun and using it on the kids himself, if he had a sufficiently bad day? If he felt pressured enough? If he’d come home the day before to find his wife in bed with the mailman?

And of course, there are no effective deterrents against those who want to die anyway. School-massacres usually involve people who are insistent on dying themselves, but taking as many as possible with them. They WANT to die anyway. And while giving a teacher a gun also gives the teacher a way of defending himself, it also means more bullets flying around. It makes the teacher a target. Unless we want to instill in every schoolteacher the absolute and irrefutable understanding that human life is cheap, irrellevant and ultimately expendable, how are we to deal with the fact that good ol’e Teach has to pick up the gun and actually pull the trigger? Many people wouldn’t be able to and…lo and behold…we’ve just given the shooter another gun and more ammo.

An armed people is a civil war waiting to happen. Violence should be monopolized by the state. That is the only civilized thing to do. Human civilization does not, as Mike Huckabee claims, come to an end if gay people are allowed to marry. They are allowed to in a number of European countries already and civilization is thriving as always. But human civilization will come to an end if we start having show-and-tells in kindergarden where little Timmy shows off his brand new Steyr Aug, and Little Georgina takes us through the finer points of her child-sized hand-grenades.

Christmas…

The season to be jolly and kind to one another.

The season where people get gunned down by frustrated people, every damned year.

The season where inequality and poverty is shown most glaringly.

The season where stress and anger flares most readily.

The season where we say things to each other that we really, deeply regret afterwards…only to learn that one can’t unsay what has been said.

What can I say except…

Ho…ho…ho…