I find that a robust, libidinous cheer is the only true and proper response to the promise of impending hawt goff secks. Obviously, Kent feels much the same way. This may or may not be a coincidence.

I feel as though I should offer up some words in respect to the approaching holiday, the ostensible anniversary of the birth of one Jesus H. Christ, but those words seem to escape me. It probably doesn't help that my instinctive reaction to the season is to psychically entrench myself and wait for the whole bloody mess to be done with. I do enjoy the gift-giving, and the gift-receiving, and even to some extent the selection and preparation of those parcels I offer up to my friends and family, but I have never been able to, as they say, get into the spirit of things. This may be a personal failing--I don't know. On a scale of one to avoiding full-on nuclear war, I don't know where the importance of Christmas spirit hangs. I suppose...it could be said that I enjoy the purely secular aspects of the holiday. The pagan friffery and the Christian patina having been peeled and shined away, leaving behind nothing but warm goodwill, generosity, and a bunch of bowtied packages on a freezing night...I can deal with that.

I really have to wonder about the people who complain about the corruption of the meaning of Christmas--complaints that inevitably wind up throwing around phrases like "crass commercialization"--because it seems as though the meanings of holidays have always been fluid. Not to hammer on Christmas too hard, I'm going to call upon the example of Easter, which was once something wholly different. It is the nature of holidays to change. We're just seeing them change in a different way because the times we live in are different. It isn't a religious institution that's hijacking the twenty-fifth of December this time, it's industry. Which actually means that the fundamental meaning is being left untouched. So long as people remember that the point of the season is to not be a douche (something which I need to work on, myself), particularly in pursuit of the materials of said season, I think that the basic idea will keep going regardless of what Walmart has to say about things.

And so, to round this all off: have a happy Christmas, and see you all next week!