Column: Not Quite Nietzsche
I would like to preface this week’s column by saying that I’m not a grinch. Really, I am all for the goodwill, brotherhood and eggnog that the holidays bring. That said, there is nothing more calculated to bring out the worst in people than this time of year.
I can’t help but think that the Christmas madness and Thanksgiving debauchery are two sides of the same sinful coin. Let us begin with Thanksgiving.
I mean, we dedicate a whole day to celebrating what we have by gorging ourselves, unbuttoning our pants and watching football. And lest we start to feel too bad about allowing ourselves a day of wickedness, our inner masochist decides to spend it with family.
The pilgrims aren’t to blame. They didn’t spend the first Thanksgiving with their families. They, being rational human beings, called Squanto.
Just as too much sun leads to skin cancer, overexposure to one’s kin leads to irritability. This and other factors make Thanksgiving a blatant gateway to the Seven Deadly Sins. The gluttony is obvious, but there are other, more subtle ways in which Thanksgiving traps us in its web of sin.
Those with a lot to be thankful for are pushed to pride, while those without much are given over to envy. And regardless of socioeconomic position, counting your blessings is a surefire way to remember what blessings you’d still like, and from that point, greed isn’t far away.
Putting up with crazy Cousin Eddie after his seventh beer brings on anger and imbibing with Eddie is what we scholars call sloth. I suppose the only Deadly Sin we aren’t prone to on Thanksgiving is lust. After all, little contributes to chastity so much as eating yourself sick and dribbling gravy down the front of your shirt.
On the flip side, Christmas rockets us out of our lethargy and sends each of us to the brink of madness. I work retail, and may thus be a little biased, but after having worked the day after Thanksgiving on multiple occasions, I will never again doubt our possession of the herd instinct. Time and civilization have doubtlessly perverted it – no self-respecting wild animal forages for a portable DVD player or television – but it still exists. Case in point: this year a woman at a Michigan Wal-Mart was actually trampled. Not to death, thankfully, but the mob did manage to take her wig right off.
So, while the talk may be all about peace and goodwill to man, the blinking Christmas lights still manage to throw 97 percent of the populous into an epileptic fit of insanity. They become the tramplers while the other 3 percent unwittingly become the trampled. Year after year, we witness the Darwinian spectacle in all of its passionless horror, unaware of its magnitude because, well, we are the problem.
So while it may be a stretch, I dare say that Santa’s decision to move to the North Pole wasn’t influenced by the balmy climate. A 300-pound jolly elf carrying toys on his back and wearing a suit akin to a Christmas present fits well into our mythologized, feel-good Christmas, but wouldn’t stand a chance in the modern world. He’d be trampled, mugged, unwrapped and served on Christmas day with a side of cranberry sauce.
Dear reader, don’t see me as a grinch. Look at me as a prophet foretelling the impending doom that awaits you for your treatment of the holidays. We may not achieve world peace just yet, but civility seems like a good place to start. There aren’t that many places to go Christmas shopping in Logan, and that means we’ll probably run into one another. All I’m asking for is a little kindness. It’ll make you easier to trample.
Zach Pendleton is a junior majoring in English. Send any comments to:
ZPendleton@cc.usu.edu