I am the Grinch.

I think I might be the Grinch. I was at home this Thanksgiving and had a lot of time scanning the local radio stations and I noticed that every time I came across a Christmas song I skipped right over it. I'll try and run through some of the reasons that I am not yet (for an unforeseen period of time) in "the Christmas mood."

1. Consumerism. I'm a hypocrite when it comes to this, but seeing consumerism makes me sick to my stomach. Did you know that someone was trampled to death during the Black Friday opening at a Wal-Mart in Long Island this year? If you don't get why the rest of the world hates the Western powers and especially America, take a long, hard, objective look at consumerism and things should start to clear up a little. And what is the big granddaddy day of America's need for more stuff? Christmas. I think Jesus might feel a little sick to his stomach too.

2. Lies to children. I know, you're expecting me to talk about Santa. I'm not; at least not in this paragraph. Here is the lie that you (parents) tell your kids: "Christmas is about giving, not receiving." And what do we do to reinforce this idea? We give the brats a boatload of toys on Christmas Day and then buy a tie for Dad and put a label on it that says "To Dad, Love [Insert Children's names here]" What did the kids do? They put a ribbon on it, maybe. You may say that Christmas is about giving, but when you shower gifts on them all they hear is "Christmas is about giving TO YOU!"

3. Christ. I wish I knew how the originators of Christmas celebrated it. All I know is that Martin Luther invented the Tannenbaum by trying to light a pine tree on fire, or something like that. I know that my parents have always had us sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus and then read some verses from the book of Matthew, but that's the most I've heard of Christ getting into Christmas. Some people use the whole "but it's a great time to tell people about Christ!" argument. As if all the other times weren't good enough. Sure, it's a great time to talk about Christ, but do you? And no, your Church's Christmas Special where the pastor tells the gospel story doesn't count.

4. Gifts. If you haven't seen the Advent Conspiracy video, you should: www.adventconspiracy.org. They claim that the total cost for giving the WORLD clean water is about 10 billion dollars. (In fact there are estimations between 9-30 billion, so let's say 30 just to avoid confusion) Compare that to the 450+ billion dollars in "holiday spending" by Americans alone (http://www.nrf.com/content/default.asp?folder=press/release2006&file=holidayforecast0906.htm). I don't know about you, but that statistic leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when I try and take a swig of eggnog. And what are those gifts that we Americans buy with our collective $450 billion? Plasma screen TV's and the latest iPods of course. I think maybe there should be a tax on the word "need" because it seems to me that the people who use it the most are the people who have no idea what it truly means. I think I might have accidentally made two paragraphs about consumerism, but just in case you didn't get the point the first time around, hopefully this helped.

5. Saint Nicholas. If I need to explain why Saint Nicholas might be offended by his modern day counterpart then you should research what "Saint" means.

I'll try and post another blog entry about why I DO like Christmas soon, but right now I'm just not in the mood.