Saturday, December 26, 2009

Am I the only one who thinks he's adopted?

God, we celebrate the birth of a baby which coincided with an order to kill all recently born male babies. Isn't that why Joseph and Mary had to take the baby into the country? And then the wise men rat the baby out? Anyway, we celebrate the death of a whole generation of male babies by getting together with our relatives? Why? Is it like, "At least OUR father wasn't killed by King Herod."

Matthew 2:16-18

16Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying,

18In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.


So, we celebrate this slaughter by exchanging gifts? Is it any wonder I'm sarcastic and indirect? I CAN'T CELEBRATE A SLAUGHTER BECAUSE ONE BABY GOT AWAY and was eventually crucified as a heretic and blasphemer. Really, every Christmas we should all gang up on the police chief, like as a stand in for King Herod.
I guess that would cut down on the greeting card industry. Imagine getting a card that says, "May the rocks you throw at the Police Chief injure him permanently. May the slaughter of the innocents be redeemed this Holiday Season. Have a merry time for revenge!"
Would you feel good about sending that to your grandmother? I wouldn't. So I don't know what I'm talking about.

But seriously, the savior may have lived but Herod eventually got his ass. Isn't that the lesson of Christianity? The man's gonna get your ass so if you're gonna start a batty cult then do it fast. Don't wait. Get your church built fast! Cuz they gonna track you down and pin you to a cross. The clock is ticking!

It's hard. We all get such high hopes for Christmas. We want it to fix everything. We want to feel good about ourselves and our families like George Bailey. EVERYTHING IS OK. God bless us everyone. Scrooge sees the light and buys a ham for everyone. Cyberdyne gives me my job back, WITH A BONUS. Well, I've learned to be happy with a glass of egg nog and tales of past Christmases gone wrong, gifts that led to misery, gifts we regret. Ain't nothing gonna get fixed. Cyberdyne didn't call. I'm just lucky my van didn't explode and the cops ignored the multiple code violations. So where is the message? Is it possible that what makes it all work is that even though we dread it, even though we know no tearful ham exchange is going to take place, no crippled kid to raise on our shoulders, no demons to exorcise, we do it anyway. Even though you want to run screaming into the river, we throw our arms around people we haven't seen in 6 years. IF every day was like Christmas it would either be a better world or we would all go insane...maybe both. But if there is one thing to be thankful for it is that if someone named King Herod gave an order to kill all the male babies under two he would be completely ignored as people sipped their egg nog and collectively agreed, "Tiger Woods is a man-whore!"

Well, if Joseph went up to a hotel and the dude said ,"we got no room but you can stay in the stable." I guess I'm in good company because after a night on the too short couch of my brother's I'm back in the carriage house in Laconia. There's no lambs or sheep but there are ducks right out the window. I'm sick from too much chocolate but there was just enough family. Hell, I even talked to my mother on the phone and I have no idea where she is. I guess if you want your life to be like a Chaz Dickenson short story then you'll be disappointed. The only ghosts are the babies King Herod slaughtered and the people you don't wish a Merry Christmas. So Merry Christmas. Baby Jesus got born today and then escaped with his family. Kind of like all of us. We made it!

Now can I please get back to downloading and watching porn?
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.