This is the new The Daily Post entry for its new challenge, Getting Seasonal, about how has your perception towards Christmas changed. Here’s my entry, so I hope you like it!
6 year old’s diary:
Goodness! I love Christmas so much! My family will come, we’ll eat together, and have a fun night, woohoo! I love this year! Everybody’s here and we’ll be dancing and singing together! It’s gifts time! We’ll all receive gifts! We’ll all have new toys! Woohoo! Christmas is the best time of the year to receive free stuff…!
Ah? Who’s Jesus?
12 year old’s diary:
Alright! It’s that time of the year already! I am so happy. People will come and we’ll all have a good night. Hmm… They no longer want to play video games. But that’s OK! I mean, that’s for kiddies. We’re all grown up, right?
But I wish they could’ve bought me better gifts… So mean of them! Can’t they see the TV and how the perfect Christmas is that one in where it snows and you receive toys? Have you guys watched TV lately…? Grr…
14 year old’s diary:
They’re here already, but why are they all watching TV? Why is nobody talking…? Oh well, at least that show’s funny, and we’re catching up with each other at dinner. It’s good to be together; I still can’t believe that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, but Christmas is the best gift ever for everybody: it’s the time of the year the whole world is together and better! And besides, I’ll receive gifts from my relatives, so it’s all OK. In fact, if you receive gifts, it means that you were nice, and this season is all about being nice. I can say that I was nice, because being nice is that… Hmm… What is it…?
Oh my, I won’t receive gifts… I guess it wasn’t really about gifts, now that I see that they’re barely here… Now that I see that, maybe, what made gifts fun is that I had people to share them with…
Oh my, Jesus’ birthday was today… I am so ashamed… I gave him no toys. And I cried for nothing… I was so selfish… But I thought that I was being good as I never swore or hit people, as TV said… My…
18 year old’s diary:
Most of them won’t come, as always, as it has been ever since a long while.
I really can’t watch the TV any longer, it’s tiring and nothing happens. I am tired that they just dedicate the programming to sell toys and stuff no one really needs, and I am even more tired because they keep using the same moral of “gifts don’t really matter”, and next time they show a commercial of an expensive toy! God dang it, people, make up your mind. To whom do you swear fealty…?
I wish the ones that came could speak more and play a bit more a video game, I don’t know… It’s really disheartening to turn on the TV and watch all…that. I wish they could speak and let me know that we’re still together—that the world is better, and it is not crumbling as I fear…
Is somebody here?
20 year old’s diary:
Why are we still waiting? Nobody’s coming. Just turn on the TV and watch anything you want already. It’ll say the same: wars, hunger, pests, killings, deaths. Deaths. Deaths. How nobody truly cares about Christmas with all those killings—how it is just another day, a special day for shopping, because no one truly cares it is a supposed day to be thankful and loving to the world. And then another commercial. Another insufferable insistence that Santa Claus exists and that you gotta buy something immediately so your kid won’t lose its childhood… Why, dammit, do you turn its childhood into something that must be bought? Why can’t you teach him that the Christmas you know it’s fake, that it’s supposed to be a Christian holiday that fell in the hands of bigger and more powerful hands that turned it into a season to show love instead of teaching how to love? Why can’t you see that you’re just a buyer? Why can’t you…?
Ok, Ok. I am eating. Sorry…
22 year old’s diary:
It’s this time again. I suppose I should be happy: there’s no such thing as a Santa Claus that will reward good children and treat them like puppies in need of a treat, and thus this world isn’t entirely ruled by corporative egomaniacs. The fact that no such marketing exchange between the supernatural and the children exists gives me the hope that the world, although not ruled by moral, isn’t ruled by loonies either. So we’re kinda safe, I guess.
Yet there’s no one—not even the memory of Jesus or anything that involves the memory’s essence in this season of the year—that can remind them that the greatest gift is not in a store; it’s not even announced with honesty on TV, no matter how many times they repeat it like stuttering old men. It’s a gift they don’t even believe in, because it is neither sold nor has a price.
It’s the gift of not humanity. And the world needs it a lot.
Oh well… Maybe they won’t be the model of Christmas, but I’ll try to be the best in this season. I won’t do much if I keep complaining, will I? And besides, even though we’ll all be alone in this dinner, I still can do something to draw a smile around, so that way I won’t become a useless Grinch…
Even though the Grinch got that catchy theme song I wish I could have, heh.
Aaaaand this is how my perception changed in undersanding and celebrating Christmas.
Thanks for reading!
The Two Thousands 