A Christmas Blog

First things first:

Yes, I said Christmas. C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s. I refuse to delude myself into believing that the celebration with food on December 25th, along with requisite tree, gifts, and red and green, is truly a non-denominational 'holiday'.

Christmas has a denomination, and that denomination is Western, just like the rest of the 'Christian' holidays out there (Easter, anyone?).

Let's look at what Christmas is all about: families getting together, eggnog, lots of food, trading presents, traditions like TV shows and telling kids a jolly fat man brings their goodies but only if they're good, and even the post-holidays complaining about things like weight gain, irritating relatives, messes, greedy children.... All of these things are peculiarly Western. How? I can't explain it; I suppose I could make a small effort though, and here it is: Eastern culture is not one for undeserved miracles; you earn your way into the stories and, basically, everything else, whereas Western culture is all about democracy. Everyone has an equal chance of being showered in gold or struck by lightning.

I hope that made sense. But it probably didn't, because Westerners don't need to understand why the majority of the world really can't celebrate Christmas, Easterners already know these things and wouldn't have to read about them, especially not from what I'm sure Indians think of as an 'ABCD' (to which I say, I'm neither confused nor much of a desi), and if you're from Russia...ouch. Have fun with the perpetual European-Asian conflict.

Anyway, that's Christmas in a nutshell: a cultural holiday, fun for everyone, though in the Eastern tradition it turns into something different--the decorations go up and the presents sit under the tree, but there's no sense of 'spirit'. And we like it that way.

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It has come to my attention that this blog is peculiarly lacking in one of the features of any reasonable blog: namely, the complaining. Well, not just the complaining--the ranting, done in the style of "I feel..." and "I think..." and so on, as if anyone actually cared and as if the sympathy from strangers online were really worthwhile.

So: I think that laptops are the poopy.

The end. See you next year.