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 Bah-Humbug!

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PostSubject: Bah-Humbug! Bah-Humbug! EmptyMon Dec 19, 2011 9:44 pm

Right at the top of my If-I-Were-Dictator-For-A-Year wish list would be moratorium on all holidays. Now bare with me. First of all, as I said, I would only be dictator for a year. Therefore, the moratorium would only last for a year. Secondly, my motivations are a little benign than it might seem at first.

The problem is that people are struggling with limited resources. And in order to live half-way decently with those resources, they have to reduce the demands being made upon them. This is simply a matter of efficiency. They require routines in order to find happiness, routines that are the result of finding what works under normal circumstances. But the problem is that there can be no normal circumstances if there is one special occasion following another to the point of special occasions no longer being special.

Allow me to illustrate: take a normal calendar. Mark off all the holidays, including the little ones such as Mother’s Day. Now mark off a few birthdays and weddings and ask yourself: how many pay periods do I actually get in which I am not obligated to pay for something extrinsic to my day to day life? To me, it’s a form of forced consumption and manipulation.

We have come to a point in which Scrooge becomes the protagonist while the positivity of Bob Cratchet becomes repulsive. Imagine struggling financially and having some clueless, yet boisterous, moron assailing you with “Merry Christmas! What ya gonna buy me?” Imagine Tiny Tim becoming little more than a tool of manipulation:

You sick bastard! He’s just a poor unfortunate child.

But then this is similar to Zizek’s decoding in Plague of Fantasies concerning advertisements like those of the Christian’s Children Fund:

Just give. Don’t question the socio-political circumstances that got them there.

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