It’s Christmas Eve — where is Christmas?

It’s been so hard this year to find any real hol­i­day spirit.? The most I’ve had was the night we put up and dec­o­rated the tree; since then I’ve mostly just had the feel­ing of “please just let it be over and done with!”? A big aspect of my hum­bug is that the overblown crass com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Christ­mas has finally begun to ruin the sea­son for me.? Try as I might to escape, or at least ignore, it, I can’t — not when the stores start putting out Christmas-​themed mer­chan­dise before Labor Day; not when dec­o­ra­tions start going up before Hal­loween is past; not when Santa Claus makes his first mall appear­ance the first week­end of Novem­ber; not when five out of every fif­teen min­utes on radio or tele­vi­sion (not to men­tion half the news­pa­per) is filled with adver­tis­ing encour­ag­ing listeners/​viewers/​readers to go into debt, if nec­es­sary, to ful­fil that spe­cial someone’s dear­est mate­r­ial wishes.

We were out for a cou­ple of hours today, just to pick up some gro­ceries and stuff, and there was an oppres­sive air all around.? Peo­ple were throng­ing the stores madly try­ing to get those last few items while they could, putting out vibes of sheer des­per­a­tion that they wouldn’t end up with the Per­fect Christ­mas.? It wasn’t the hol­i­day feel­ing I remem­ber from the past, not at all.

DH pointed out some­thing ear­lier tonight that I hadn’t real­ized.? What hap­pened to “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All?”? He’s right; I’ve heard noth­ing about that wish this year.? If any­one cares about it any­more, they aren’t say­ing.? It’s all about the Almighty Profit Mar­gin, it seems.

What­ever did hap­pen to Christmas?