It's Christmas Time Again

Christmas is a busy time of year for us here at Largely the Truth.  We are driven to eat everything within arm's reach while remaining mobile enough to pick up the phone and command Dan to deliver more.  I'd like to say that the reason we do is that we run a food blog but the sad, simple truth is that we are gluttons.  Handsome gluttons.  Actually this year it seems like Max is watching his girlish figure so the burden of tradition falls on my broad shoulders and I have sworn to Crom that I shall bear it proudly.  The table in our dining room is lined with enough sweets to give Type 2 diabetes to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and at our current pace I expect Nicky & I to be bleeding syrup inside a week.  I've always said that for me Christmas is crafted from beautiful lights, music & the people I love rather than gifts & an abundance of food.  While that still holds true I'd be lying if I said the box of Turtles wasn't a happy bonus.

You don't have to go far at this time of year to hear the lamentations of those who believe we've strayed from the true roots of Christianity, which, if the historical record reads right seem to be "attacking brown people because they make us self-conscious when we take off our trousers" and "persecuting Jews for killing our Lord & Savior despite the fact he was sent here to die for our sins in the first place."  It's an even shorter trip to find people crying foul over the consumerist juggernaut that's blowing through at ramming speed, leaving scores of ravished credit cards & overindulged Wal-Mart children in its wake. Since both points have been beaten into the ground by other, more erudite and driven pundits I won't bother throwing in my two cents except to say this:  shopping malls are abysmal at any time of year, the addition of several hundred people with more credit than brains will not make it any better - stay at home and shovel some snow instead.  Christmas is not to blame for this - it is an unwilling victim of Mattel, Hasbro and that bastard Steve Jobs. Also, Jesus would probably be a lot more fun at parties than the people who march under his name.

Well, most of them.  In his 2007 documentary "What Would Jesus Buy" filmmaker Rob Van Alkemade followed the Reverend Billy & his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they traveled across America to warn holiday gift-buyers of the impending "Shopocalypse", the collapse of society as brought about by over-consumption and rising debt.  Usually I refuse to openly discuss religion, sticking instead to subjects about which I may know little but are less likely to provoke frothing at the mouth.  Disagreeing with someone about the quality of the bison burger at Fifth Street Bar & Grill will probably end with some hurt feelings and a black eye or two.  Daring to question the prophet is much more likely to end somewhere secluded with a knife expertly angled between my ribs.  This one time  I'd like to break that policy and mention that Reverend Billy seems like the kind of guy Jesus would have sat down to an armwrestle with.  He's manic, devoted and absolutely sincere.  The kind of guy who casts moneylenders out of the temple and then drops the elbow on them, just to cement the point.  Speaking of points - what is mine?  I forget.  But let's start with Merry Christmas and end with Happy New Year.  The in-between is up to you but do us all a favor and fill it with something worthwhile - introspection, masturbation, macrame - something.  Just cut down on the shopping and stop saying "Happy Festivus".