GuildCom

I just wanted to post a quick blurb for you all before I log off until Friday (I’ll be tied up this evening and all day tomorrow, though its possible I could slip in to post a comment or two…).

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas (or whatever you might celebrate), and hope everyone has a good and safe one.   

…Now, off to claim my loot and gain five pounds.  Take care, everyone! 

“Happy Holidays” makes sense as a phrase only if you’re lazy as hell. Frankly, there’s enough time between Christmas and New Year’s that you should be able to muster up a second seasonal greeting following the first in time for the 31st.

Yes, I’m being rather racist and deliberately excluding the possibility of people celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. If I knew any Jews, I might bother to greet them appropriately if they thought it was a big deal. (Any intelligent Jews might point out that Hanukkah is only a big deal because some part of the male ego feels slighted if one’s personal holiday of choice is somehow less important than someone else’s personal holiday of choice.

I don’t know any Jews.

I sure as hell don’t know anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa. Seeing as it was INVENTED in 1966, I think I’m safe in ignoring that particular time-honored “Pan-African” tradition (nothing, mind you, is “Pan-African” because Africa is FUCKING CONTINENT rather than a country) for the time being. Give it another millennium and we’ll take a crack at it.

Christmas, on the other hand, was invented by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages a damn long time ago and absorbed traditions associated with other even older pagan holidays as pagan cultures were assimilated into the Church itself. (Note my capitalization of the word “Church”; in those days, there was only one.)

Yes, the Yule log and the Christmas tree are leftovers from other religions. Do I care? No! I am a leftover of another religion. Come on, people; my family has Germanic roots in the days prior to Beowulf, when the English language sounded like a constant string of expletives.

So don’t expect to hear “Happy Holidays” from me, kiddos. What you will hear, instead, this time of year, is a quick comment on the commercial nature of the season.

But this, too, is not your average, politically-correct, anti-capitalist comment. Actually, there’s nothing average about this. Why? Keep reading.

On the 24th, Christmas Eve, I watched the first ten minutes of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Monday Night Raw. Wrestling, on Christmas Eve? Yeah, I know, not your average family-oriented activity. Actually, it was the first time I’ve caught any of the show in years. Nonetheless, I did get to have a quick look. There was something unusual about it.

They were in Iraq.

I won’t be categorizing this under “politics,” so shut your yap about the war. I don’t give a fuck. This isn’t the time of year to talk about that nonsense. According to Scorpio, WWE has gone overseas every Christmas for five years now to put on a show for our men and women under arms.

Commendable.

Say what you will about the money to be made there. Say what you will about the publicity to be had (I am, after all, putting their name out here for you to see — at no cost to WWE, right?). Question their motivations if you must.

I will not.

Not in December, at the very least. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of bored teens and twenty-somethings out there in the desert. Maybe they wouldn’t go to a wrestling show if they were back home in the States, but they can’t go to much of anything over there. This is a tiny piece of American culture that drags its happy ass halfway around the world to give these kids a little Christmas cheer.

I hope our soldiers enjoyed the show. I hope every one of them has a great Christmas. And I hope, above all else, that every one of them is able to enjoy next Christmas, too.

But I’m also thankful for the sacrifices they make — and thankful to people like those at WWE who are ready and willing to support those who step up to make the sacrifice. I don’t care why they do it. If a soulless corporate evil can do it, so can the rest of us.