After watching the latest Ken Burns documentary on The American Buffalo, I’ve realized again that America was mostly built on greed.

I don’t know why I seem to forget that from time to time. Maybe it’s the dim witted idealism that we desire to be a good and kind race above all the evils of the world.

Occasionally there’s a ray of hope. A good deed done by humans that erases some of the bad and instills the delusion of positive liberalism.

Alas, this blog is not about bison or the starvation of natives or even good and bad deeds. I only mention the documentary because it made me wonder… At which point was unchecked greed powerfully enhanced by unregulated marketing?

I graduated from an advertising design school and during my studies I was often appalled at the lack of decency and responsibility to be slightly ethical. Eventually I was excluded from group projects or decided to go it alone and abandon my unscrupulous peers. One issue I protested was an actual TV commercial airing in the Valley of the Sun where an animated piggy bank was brutally murdered with a hammer. The pink ceramic pig was portrayed in absolute terror, cornered and being slowly approached by the evil hammer. The lighting became dark with beams of light shining and flickering on the fragile cash filled pig crying in fear. It was especially gruesome and out of season for a thirty second Arby’s commercial.

A few days after a heated debate over the commercial in “Videography” class, where I was outnumbered and forced to retreat and silence my scruples, the commercial was pulled off the air due to public complaints of violence. I remained silent and deemed them all unworthy of an ‘I told you so’ from me. I wanted nothing to do with those people.

The experience made me sadly aware that my sociopathic classmates were going to be the next generation of advertisers that would greatly influence America in thirty second, commercialized mini films in the near future. 1989 was a tough year and perhaps the reason for America’s current waywardness.

So when did it happen? The thing that ruins Christmas every damn year. You know what it is. It’s only second to blaring horns and deadlocked traffic. Breathing toxic exhaust fumes and shuffling through box stores to get nonsense presents for family members or friends that wouldn’t have picked it out for themselves, because it wasn’t what they really wanted, and then contributing to even more congestion on the trip to return items after the stupid holiday.

And yes, Christmas is stupid. It’s historically and even mythically inaccurate. It excludes cultures across the globe that celebrate the changing of the season. It doesn’t mention the whole Pagan thing at all and has us believing that it’s Jesus’s birthday. A white guy hanging out in Jerusalem and Egypt until he was nailed to some boards and died. But it was cool because he came back. Back from the dead, for reals, y’all. But that’s another holiday. This one in December is mostly about presents and stress until it’s over and we can all finally relax and aggressively watch grown men play with a ball on TV.

It’s culturally divisive by religious beliefs. Even the name suggests that it is strictly Roman Catholic – which is like christian-zilla. The name is Christ-Mass. Nobody has a problem with that? Really? In this cancel culture generation?

Or maybe Christmas could be interpreted scientifically as the amount of matter that makes up the Jesus.

Christmas is horribly disruptive to nature and the environment. Birds are now subject to pointless decorative light pollution in tall trees – all freakin’ night! Fake plastic snow never decomposes and of course eventually winds up in the ocean, and a massive amount of conifer type trees are murdered, degraded, publicly shamed, and displayed in the living rooms of countless homes. Tinsel is eaten by cats and slowly digested into shiny, pretty trailing cat turds. Dogs eat boxes of seizure inducing chocolate and devour peanut brittle leaving diarrhea remains that resemble… peanut brittle. The only thing worse for wild and domestic animals are explicitly loud fireworks in the new calendar year and on the fourth of July.

But the worst thing,…the worst thing…is advertising. Visual and auditory pollution. Lazy ad-copy writing reliant upon christmatism (a cross between Christmas and patriotism). Appropriating the holiday icons, such as Rudolph, rosy cheeked caucasian children, snowmen (..and where are the snow women? Trump might ask. We love the snow women, don’t we), Mrs. Claus, and Santa Clause and having them represent rampant greed and commercialism.

But why not Jesus? Why isn’t he included in the hocking of material items? Why’s he so special? After all, it’s his own name in the holiday. He should be the spokesperson. It’s not Santamas or Saint Nickmas. They could have him on the cross pitching ads for Goldman-Sachs or Chick-Fil-A, on or off the cross. Either way works, as long as it’s not on a Sunday.

But the absolute worst, worse than everything, is the theft and desecration of music. Holiday songs repurposed for profit. The laziest form of art is to take what has already been created by someone else and change the lyrics to suit your evil capitalistic purpose. Don’t make it funny-I say sarcastically. Don’t be clever or creative. Don’t be a wordsmith or intelligent. Just keep it as bland and boring as your God damned soul. Go ahead, use the world’s most famous and popular, heart filled, sincerely written songs to sell your manufactured concoctions, elixirs, and snake oil. Feel free to obtain your massive wealth built on the backs of the impoverished and oppressed. It’s the American way, after all.

There’s a special room in Hell for Christmas music marketing planners and it’s filled with perpetually screaming children, tinsel turds, epileptic dogs having seizures, and peanut brittle diarrhea on white carpet everywhere. And there will be music. Their own stolen auditory abominations pumping out at a consistently creepy volume, chipping away at their souls for all eternity.

So, anyway…Merry Christmas!