See You Next Year Jesus

Howdy gang. Phil Honus here. I haven't seen you since last year! Get it? We're in the new year. :) !!!!!
It feels great to be in 2008 (Notice the rhyme? I am killing it right now). Hope you all had an awesome holidays. I know I did. It was egg-nog-tastic! :) Hahaha. But for reallys. I had so much fun getting presents and giving presents. And you know, I had a lot of time to reflect on why we celebrate Christmas. Guess what? I think I came to some conclusions.
It wasn't something I just arrived at either. I talked to a lot of people about this. And I found out some PRETTY interesting stuff.
First of all I asked my friend who owns a grocery store about the meaning of Christmas. "Why Phil," he said, "Christmas is about giving. Giving gifts."
Well that sounded pretty good to me. I think giving is a fine idea. Then he clarified a little.
"Christmas is about giving gifts that you bought from some place. In fact, the more money you spend on someone, the more that you love them."
WOAHH! That kind of caught me off guard. You can just see my head spinning in circles after that comment, and NO, I don't mean like in the Exorcist. I'm not possessed, sillies.
But then I thought about it a little more. I thought of my impoverished cousins who always sent us the crappiest gifts when we were little. And I thought of how we always knew we would be dissapointed when we opened up something from them. Sometimes it might be a used book. Sometimes it might be a family picture with some cookies, which weren't that good I will tell you.
Well you know what? I now understand that my poor destitute cousins don't love us very much. Thanks, Brent, for the insight.
After that I went and talked to my mom. "What do I think about Christmas," she asked me. "I think Christmas is all about family, spending time with the ones you love."
Now that sounds pretty reasonable, don't you think? You can always trust Mother.
I asked her, then, why my younger brother didn't come to Christmas this year.
"Because he's a self-centered lay-about who's too cheap to buy his own mother the blender she's wanted for five years, just like his father who spends all of his time reading hunting magazines. Why are you so concerned with him anyways? Start minding your own damn business and get me another drink."
Holy shamoley! Mom is crazy sometimes.
I was a little confused by that point. I though about Christmas a little more. Why is it called Christmas anyways? I asked one of my professors, and she said that the Catholic church began celebrating the birth of Christ at the same time that pagans were celebrating the winter solstice, or something like that.
"Christ? as in Jesus Christ?" I asked.
"Yep," she said.
Okay, I thought. Now we're getting someplace. I tried to talk to my professor some more about Jesus, but she said that I should talk to a religious leader instead, since she was an atheist and didn't believe in God and didn't want babies to be saved from eternal hell-fire.
But which religious leader was I going to talk to? I mean, there are so many of those guys. And girls, too. Whoops-a-daisy! Don't want to start a battle of the sexes.
I started driving around, not sure who to talk to, when I saw a Catholic church on the corner. Well, it does make sense to talk to the church that started Christmas in the first place, I thought.
I went inside and found the father, which, for all of you who don't know, is the name of the preacher at the Catholic church. "What is the meaning of Christmas?" I asked him.
He thought about it for a second. "Christmas time is one of the two times when people come to church. They come, act religious and holy for an hour, and then you don't see them again until Easter. So to answer your question, Christmas is about people pretending they believe in Jesus all so they can justify being really greedy and expecting presents from everyone."
After that the father went outside to smoke a cigarette. I followed him out and thanked him for the insights.
"Whatever. I'm just pissed I didn't get the new robe I asked for."
So all of these different, yet similar perspectives- what do they all mean, then?
I'll tell you. Christmas is about using any method possible to get things. If it means you have to appeal to the religious crowd by putting up nativity scenes, then that's one method. If it means putting up trees and pretending there is a Santa Claus to appeal to the children, then that's another. If you have to put the emphasis on family to justify having your sister spend her rent money to get you a present, well that's just perfect. You have to have them all, too. If you focus on the Christian approach, then people will only give and no one will receive. But throw in the Santa Claus/Commercialism approach, too, and you've got a bunch of happy giving/receiving people. That is what Christmas is about to me. Giving and receiving. Throw in a little Karl Marx approach and you can justify receiving more than you give.
So Happy Birthday Jesus. And thanks a bunch Santa Claus. And good seeing you Dad.
We'll see you all next year.