From The Archive: The Christmas Impostor

Back in High School I was on the school newspaper called The Gillnetter. Yes I was a blowhard early on in life as well. While most of my articles were difficult to sift through and find any type of coherent meaning some were slightly comprehendible to the audience it was meant for. The following article I wrote for the Christmas issue and I suppose still has relevance today and I figured instead of lashing out at corporate America again I would just give you a piece I have written before. I guess I didn't need to post this then. Here you have it, a High School version of what I posted yesterday, from the archives: The Christmas Impostor.

(As before anything in this color delineates a note from my present self)

Where is my Christmas? (The nerve of that young man)  What has corporate America done with it? Who is this gift bearing impostor? This is no Saint Nick I see, this is some fat man hired by big business to take my money! (Oh how little you knew!)
Money, Money, Money! That is all the corporate giants see when they find Christmas on the calendar. And all they think about is how best to make more money than the previous year. That would explain why it appears that Christmas comes earlier every year (I'm going to start keeping track of that next year, maybe it will be a new feature "When _______ started this year!).
That thought occurs to me once every year, you know the thought, it usually happens when you walk into CVS (Or Borders) in mid November and see Christmas decorations throughout the store (Pre-Thanksgiving this year). You just stand there in awe and, if you are anything like me, use an explicative or two to show your bewilderment (Such a bad ass this kid is, someone should let him know). Some of us, alright maybe just me, go up to the manager and ask them if they have gotten their dates or holidays mixed up in some way because it is clearly not even Thanksgiving yet. The manager generally replies that its corporate policy and he, or she, knows nothing more. (Those last two sentences were bold faced lies, there is no way, I mean it was impossible that at that point in my life I would walk up to a stranger, let alone a stranger with authority and say something like that. LIAR!)
That answer leaves me wondering, are we all OK with this impostor Christmas that has been installed by corporate America or is it that we are all just oblivious to it? Are we content with a Christmas that mandates lavish gifts for all and decorations and the festivities to be up and running by mid-October? Or do we all just not realize that the true meaning of Christmas has been masked by a scheme from the Fortune 500? (I don't think I knew what the Fortune 500 was at this point)
By no means am I trying to be Ebenezer Scrooge (Yes you are), I mean I do enjoy the holiday. Sorry to disappoint but I actually do like Christmas time (Really, because I could have swore that you were just ripping it for the past few minutes). I’m not the complete anti-society child you take me for (Wrong, I am such a shut in). It is just I do not think we should start the Christmas festivities so early. Allowing corporate America to take Christmas and stretch it over a three-month span takes away from the true meaning and feeling of Christmas. What ever happened to the twelve days of Christmas? Why can’t we put up a real tree a few days before Christmas (Now that is something I can get behind) and take it down a week or so after? Why does it have to be up right after Thanksgiving and down the day of Christmas? That’s not Christmas spirit that’s just going through the motions, showing to the world that you can go out and buy the gifts and put on a good show. Anyone can buy a gift and put up a tree, but it takes a real human to actually have some feeling behind it.
So this year go out and buy a real tree and buy some slightly cheaper gifts that will actually mean something to the recipient, and please don’t just go through the motions.
A Merry Christmas to All!

That's a whole lot of Christmas ranting for someone who is not all that religious. I was such a liar back then, and a bad one at that.