By Francis A. Wilson—

Now don’t get me wrong – Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. I just hate this particular time of the year. The freaking snow is a pain, the damn carolers are annoying as hell, and that jolly old Saint Nick never seems to get my letters.

Christmas used to be a wonderful time, a time when a kid could get all of the outrageous toys he or she wanted, and mommy and daddy could break their backs to get all of the goods for the ungrateful little ankle biters, but no more.

This holiday now stands for consumerism, and not the good kind of moderate consumerism of yester year, but full blown empty bank accounts kind of consumerism.

Christmas just gives the corporations, toy makers, and gadget inventers to come up with new products on the fly in order to get ready for the holiday season, over inflate the prices, and make a killing. And I do mean a killing, literally and metaphorically.

People have died in the pursuit of these tasty damnable treats. I mean come on, isn’t Christmas supposed to be about giving and helping your fellow man?

Well not anymore folks. It’s now about the latest piece of technology that will go obsolete in a month only to be replaced by something else, or its cousin with a different name that is essentially the same thing but in a different box.

That aside, Christmas is still a wonderful time of year. I love shuffling my car out of pounds of snow in freezing cold temperatures. No one likes digging out their car, but they can’t help but do it to get to the stores in order to buy more useless crap.

Go figure. Instead, what the corporations and toy companies should do is make something to not only dig your car out, but make it fun, quick and easy. Fat chance of that actually happening.

I mean really, the only thing this holiday really does is it teaches children the valuable lesson of getting dumped on in life, and how to be pandered out for what can only be considered sweat shop prices for lazy people who would rather shell out the dollars in order to get out of doing the work themselves.

What a valuable and delightful holiday lesson for the future of mankind. It is no surprise why they grow up to not only hate Christmas, but also to eventually have kids of their own in order to perpetuate the cycle. Wow, what a wonderful holiday.

This is why I hate Christmas. This is why I hate this time of year. And, most of all I know ninety percent of you will agree with me, and think the very same thing.

What happened to Christmas, and the true spirit of Christmas? I am sure it still exists, or at the very least can still exist in some small measure somewhere in this chaotic world of corporate consumerism. Can’t it?