A Holiday Message from WM

Like a snarling pack of ravenous wolves, the Christmas season is now upon us. Every year we run the same stupid gauntlet of shopping crowds, cloying Christmas songs, perverted mall Santas, and fawning over bastardized pagan mummery like decorating trees and hanging mistletoe while putting up signs that say "Jesus is the reason for the season". Like androids, we're all supposed to be programmed with some kind of joy/merriment circuit that activates on the day after Thanksgiving.

Well I must be a factory reject, because all Christmas fills me with is HATE. Hate for the assholes at the mall. Hate for 24-hour Christmas carols on the office radio. Hate for the Very Special Christmas Episodes. Hate for ornaments. Hate for endless diamond commercials. And hate hate HATE for "Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney.

If you're still with me by this paragraph, you probably share some speck of what I feel. The following points/gentle requests/tortured wails may be familiar to you then - spread them far and wide.

1. The first, and this is an important one, is don't lie to your kids about Santa. If you must partake in this nonsense, tell your child that it's a nice little folk tale. Do not under any circumstances give your kid the impression that it's anything but harmless bullshit. My reasoning is two-fold:

A. Your kid, when he/she finds out the truth, will never believe anything you say ever again. Seriously. Why do you think I'm an atheist? And if they don't find out the truth, sign 'em up for the short bus to school. Any child with even a mild grasp of Einstein's theory of relativity and thermodynamic principles knows that it's just not possible to visit all those Christian rooftops in one night.

B. Take some friggin' credit. You worked for the money. You put up with your child's incessant whining. You stood in line at 7 AM in the cold at Toys R Us. You calculated how much giftwrap it would take to cover an 18-cubic-foot box. So why would you want to give some rotund 19th-century Thomas Nast caricature the props for the Big Wheels you bought little Hunter?

The world is full of enough mystery and wonder that you don't have to make up slave-driving Arctic Nintendo distributors to impress your child. Lie to your kids and they'll stop asking the important questions. Like: Why is the sky blue? How can bees fly? What's in Spam? Why does Hollywood keep letting Roland Emmerich make movies?

2. Quit bellyaching about the "over-commercialization" of Christmas. I can't believe I even have to explain this. If you're one of the pompous douchenozzles who spout this crap every year and think it makes you sound really intelligent, allow me pop your balloon. In America, we live in a service-based economy that's increasingly driven by retail - Wal-Mart didn't become the nation's largest employer by accident. Entire sectors of the world economy require a strong Christmas shopping season just to stay afloat; how many toys are made in China now, by Chinese people who need you to buy it to keep them in rice? Do you hippies have any idea what would happen to our global economic system if everybody just stopped buying gifts one year? How's a little economic meltdown sound to you? Hope you like the taste of dumpster chow and the slimming effect a burlap sack has on your thighs.

Do your part to ward off the apocalypse: buy a gift.

3. If one more person calls me a Grinch I'll start kicking asses until my knees give out. Heads up to you cultural illiterates: the Grinch wanted to ruin Christmas for the people of Whoville. I do NOT want to ruin Christmas for anyone. I just want it out of my face.

4. This isn't a request, so much as an incontrovertible fact: "Jingle Bell Rock" is the least rocking song ever made. In your entire life, I guarantee you will never hear somebody yell "FUCK YEAH! JINGLE BELL ROCK! WOOOOO!".

5. Stop with the automatic "Merry Christmas" to everyone you see. It used to merely be insincere, but now it's just creepy in a Stepford Wives way. There's a precious few people I sincerely hope have a Merry Christmas. They know who they are, and they know I mean it when I say it and that I'm thankful when it's said to me by them. To the other 99.44% of you who chirp "Merry Christmas" to me and expect the same in return every time I walk into a store/restaurant/bathroom/whatever, the words "rat's ass", and my personal failure to give said rodent anus come to mind. The attendant at the gas station can have an Extremely Mediocre Christmas for all I care.

So there you have it. From the staff at Wicked Machine, we wish you an Average Christmas; an Acceptable one if the opportunity presents itself.