Some people hate Christmas. Some people say things like, “America has taken a simple holiday that was meant to be about love and joy and turned it into a gross celebration of consumerism.” Or they say things like: “America has taken the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and turned it into… a gross celebration of consumerism.” Or, if they’re slightly smarter, they say: “Historians believe that Jesus was born in the summer, not the winter, and Christmas is just a modification of an old pagan holiday that we have turned into a gross celebration of consumerism.”
To these people I say the following: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, GIVE ME MY FREE PRESENTS NOW. Presents! No other holiday gives you so many presents! I don’t like candy, turkey is gross, and Easter confuses me because I’m Jewish. But Christmas… now there’s a motherfucking holiday. That gives you lots of presents. My family made token attempts to celebrate Hanukkah when I was a kid, until I wisely bitched and moaned and correctly pointed out that you don’t get nearly as many presents for Hanukkah as you get for Christmas. (Only one present a night for Hanukkah? That’s bullshit!) Thus, my family switched over to the celebration of Christmas, and we’ve never looked back since.
…To be fair, there are some problems with Christmas. Such as the fact that the holiday shopping season now apparently starts in August. And then there are the horrible Christmas commercials that start playing in November. Like this one:
OHHHHH CHRISTMAS YOU SO FINE YOU SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND, GO CHRISTMAS! CLAP CLAP CLAP! GO CHRISTMAS! Awesome job, The Gap, way to go!¹ You have created an ad that is a uniquely horrible combination of a Toni Basil song, the movie “Bring It On,” “Stomp,” the Blue Man Group, and everything else that is terrible in this universe. …GO CHRISTMAS! CLAP CLAP CLAP!
Also: “Go Hanukkah”? Come on. I’ve already explained that I’m Jewish, and even us Jews know that Hanukkah sucks.² And: “Go Kwanzaa”? …“Go Solstice”? What the hell… is Solstice? Is it like the Wiccan Christmas? Don’t even tell me, and I don’t even want to look it up, because then I’ll be stuck knowing what “Solstice” is for the rest of my life. …Come on, advertisers, stop throwing us these bones. Reminding people of lesser crappy holidays just reminds us that you’re only pretending to care about them. You don’t. Are any Gap models or employees celebrating Solstice this year? They are most certainly not. So just stop it with the multi-culturalism already. Fake multi-culturalism is so played out and 90s-ish anyway.
However, I would like to thank you for one thing, horrible Gap commercial. Watching you has helped to solidify my newly-created Unified Ghostbusters Theory of Everything, wherein everything can be explained… with reference to the movie “Ghostbusters.” For example, all winter holidays can be broken down “Ghostbusters” style. To wit:
1) Christmas = Bill Murray = the only cool holiday and the only holiday that you want to be associated with.
2) Hannukah = Dan Aykroyd = Christmas’s geekier, more awkward pal.
3) Kwanzaa = Ernie Hudson = the token black holiday that you often forget about.
4) “Solstice” = Egon = I still don’t know what Solstice is, but Egon is the lamest of the Ghostbusters, and Solstice has got to be the lamest holiday ever.
So there you go. Also, I’d like to admit that I have only just come up with the Unified Ghostbusters Theory of Everything, but I have a strong feeling that it probably works for analyzing, well, everything. Relationships, U.S. Presidential Elections, where to have dinner tonight… anyway, feel free to test out my Ghostbusters Theory and let me know how it goes.
…And that is all. So, happy Christmukakwanzosolstice, everyone! Only like 58 shopping days left!
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FOOTNOTES:
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1) Also, I don’t want to even talk about the photo of the Gap model at the top of this article. She is apparently being eaten by multi-colored stripes and it’s all very annoying and I don’t want to talk about it.
2) Actual Hanukkah presents that I have received from my grandmother, who has never really gotten with the whole Christmas program: (a) Socks. (b) “The Big Book of Jewish Sports Heroes.” I am not making this up. The Big Book… of Jewish Sports Heroes. The book was approximately fifteen pages long. I am not making that up either.
Oliver Miller
Oliver Miller writes for Thought Catalog, and writes a second column for The Faster Times. ...
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