Are you familiar with Charles Dickens classic Christmas story “A Christmas Carol”? Let me refresh you. It’s about this guy named Scrooge who was visited by the 3 Christmas spirits; The Christmas Past, the Christmas Present and The Christmas Future. Well? OK! Maybe it’s time I give you my version of this Christmas classic eh?
So hold your breath and count to 3….1….2…..3.
Christmas Past.
So the first in the list is the Spirit of Christmas Past. Here we can see pagan customs taken by Christians to make their own. The time was said to be the birth of Mithra. Druids also commemorate this date as the arrival of the winter solstice. The date of December 25 does not correspond to Christ’s birth but to the feast of the Natalis Solis Invicti, the Roman sun festival at the solstice. The Roman Empire began their official recognition of sun worship during the time of Aurelian when he instituted the cult of “Sol Invictus”. There is virtually no difference between the cult of Sol Invictus and that of Mithraism or for that matter traditional Christianity.
So, Christmas is nothing but a recycled pagan custom after all. Bah! Humbug!
Now we go to Christmas Present.
“Tis the season to be jolly.” Maybe the other name for this spirit is commercialism.
This is PARTY TIME!!!
Here in this season, the separation between the poor and the rich becomes more evident.
People on this time are too busy buying things for presents, parties and “Noche Buenas” to stuff their bellies while half of Manila is starving, eating trash in garbage cans or left-over thrown by restaurants, or food not even suited to be eaten by your dogs. This is also the time for religious hypocrites to thrive, blessing the rich because of the amount of their church donations. Social climbers and phonies held charity events to “help” the poor, to stuff the bellies of prison inmates with fruit cakes, to give clothes and toys to the destitute, all just for the show, but won’t even lift a finger to distribute their glut on ordinary seasons.
In the Philippines, it’s the time of the 13-month pay and bonus our employee would love to have, unfortunately, some business establishment cannot even give these people a decent minimum wage. It is also the time of the merchants who takes gain from selling their goods to the voracious public. People with very little money left in their pocket, will still try to buy some delicious ham for his family to feast on Christmas Eve will be eventually victimized by vulture-like merchandisers who will rise the commodity prices. It is the time marred with greed on the part of the business men and gift-receivers and the by pressure of duty, obligation, and guilt for the gift-givers. Tis the season where one can see the grossest display of the union between religion and business.
What so funny at this time are people pretend to be good. It’s really sickening hearing famous personalities, famous faces, politicians (especially politicians) announce good will and peace on Earth. Really like they mean it huh? BOY YOU”RE SO PHONY! And why make this a season of giving and sharing? Why this season huh? For 11 months you guys are killing each other, throwing mud at each others faces. Then be good at Christmas time so we can continue beating each others ass by January next year?
So what we have is a fraud celebration of a Christian messiah’s birth, commercialisms, greed and hypocrisy. Now what spirit are we talking about here? So why wait after 11 months to have this humanitarian spirit of goodwill to fellow men?
Christmas Future
Christmas future is only a speculation. Well we may end up with 2 possible roads. 1.) To continue fooling ourselves in thinking that this pagan holiday is a Christian holiday of a birth of a so-called Savior who will save the world from sin. Turning this circus as a good opportunity to bamboozle others and to make an impression to the public of how good we are. Turning dejected people as pegs in which you can put on a show about your surfeit so others will find you rolling in it.
Or
2.) We can make this humanitarian spirit available all year round, with no string attached.
The choice is yours.
[…] A Different Carol […]
HAHAHAHA! xD this is so true
Or you could look at it another way – while it may seem hypocritical, Christmas gives people a chance to be better than who they really are. Once every year, we get to experience being 'nice' and then try to make it stick the rest of the year. Which is certainly better than the alternative of no Christmas at all, then people would be selfish pricks all year round.
I'm also tempted to call you on your anti-capitalist remarks, but I don't think that was the point of your post (and I'd be nitpicking).
Good read nonetheless. 🙂
Ah, this so reminds me of a blog post I wrote a long time ago. =)