In my personal opinion Christmas has become too commercialized. You never used to see Christmas decorations in the stores until the day after Thanksgiving, which is when the holiday season started. You never saw Christmas sales in July or Christmas Decorations next to Halloween Decoration. The Sears Christmas catalog may have arrived in mid November and we cat down and circled all our choices. We knew we might get 5 toys at the most. Grandpa spent all year in his shop building toys for us. Grandma sewed doll clothes and embroidered pillowcases. We spent the holiday season making Christmas tree decorations out of paper or old Christmas cards or craft supplies. We used to have bow makers and I loved to make bows and roses out of ribbon. We each got names of the poor from the giving tree at church and we were given about 5 to buy a present or two for the person usually a toy and something warm. We spent several hours in the store to find just the right something with the limited amount of money we had. We also went through the cupboards and got canned goods for the poor. We were taught Christmas was about giving to others even though we did not have much money. My dads parents, my grandparents spent either the week before Christmas Eve at our house and Christmas Day and the week after at my Uncle and his family where we would go for Christmas dinner or it would be the other way around. Grant usually came over, he never married so spent the holidays with us.

The point I am trying to make is today it is all commercialized. Christmas has gone from being a season of giving yourself to others and spending time with family and friends, to a season of "he who spends the most or gets the biggest or most toys wins.
I felt guilty when I started going to college full time and did not have time to make gifts for my family and had to buy them. I was not giving them a piece of myself. No my kids were not deprived, they got store bought toys and video games etc but I also made them clothes. But the adults in my family did get homemade presents. Jams, Jellies, Cookies Embroidered items, Christmas tree decorations, clothes, Craft items.

but the way the blog is written, it seems like you embrace this commerciality of late december. it has a "lets slap santa's picture on everything so it will sell" message. atleast to me

At Work/school I work in the library. The biggest topic of discussion is how to reach both "cultures/generation". There are basically two cultures we have to reach. Culture one has grown up on technology and does not know a world that has not had computers. They were raised to think and interact and live their lives interacting with technology and expect us to teach them cutting edge technology. The fluidity constantly flowing and changing technology is natural to them. Then there is the other generation that crossed the prairie in covered wagons and are still trying to find the "on" button on their cellphone, computer, navigation system in the car etc. hell even the toilets are computerized to flush for you when you stand up and walk away. We think different. While some or many of us are learning the new technology it is still overwhelming and constantly changing and just when you thought you learned how to use it... they go and update it and change the fucking thing and you have to learn it all over again.

What does all this have to do with the poem? It is sarcasm. It is making fun of the commercialism. Christmas was about opening your doors to your neighbors and treating them with love and helping strangers with out expecting any thing in return. You know the strange old man or old lady down the street. We were not taught to be afraid of them, we were taught to help them. We were always hanging out at the old peoples houses helping them. We were not taught to fear things or people we did not know "Stranger Danger." Of course most of our moms were at home and so were the old retired people if we saw someone we did not know we would go to someones house and tell them. We knew who lived in all the houses in a two block range and could go to any of them except the house that was rented out to several college guys. We weren't suppose to bother them. We would check on the old people in the winter to make sure they stayed warm. They made us cookies. We checked to make sure there was smoke coming out of the chimney. We helped them wrap their pipes and gathered pine cones and helped them put peanut butter on them on rolled them in bird seed and hung them on the trees outside their windows so they could watch the birds. I helped the neighbor lady wind her balls of yarn so she could knit. How old were we? We were in grade school. Yes we went into their houses. But they made us run home and tell our parents where we were. About the time I hit 14 my parents separated and I discovered drugs and quit helping the neighbors and my brother began his career as a thief and I was no longer welcome in their houses. Where did I grow up? The Greenwood district of northern Seattle. The highlight of Christmas was going into downtown Seattle and looking at all of the Christmas displays in the store windows. The stores had huge display windows with train tracks and reindeer, decorated trees, lights. We used to beg mom to take us down there. We never bought anything we just went window shopping. Dad would take us out to Candy Cane lane to look at all the Christmas lights. We used to wander up and down the streets at night looking at the lights or take our bikes and ride them to Blue Ridge the rich neighborhood and look at the lights on their houses. If we were bored we were we kick outside and told to go find someone to play with.We played baseball and football at the corner in the dark under the street lights. After dark we still played tag and hide and seek in our gloves and ski masks. It is more fun to play hide and seek in the dark. I broke my collar bone one year playing cigarette squat tag in the snow after dark, while my parents were at a Christmas Party. My big sister who was in high school was babysitting. I laid in bed and cried until they got home sometime after midnight. They did not have cell phones or pagers so we could drag them out of the party they were at. Then was drug to the emergency room to find out why I would not stop crying. I realize this is way too long. But I am not sure how else to explain it.

doh i replied to myself. check the post beneath this

THANK GOD FOR TELLING ME ITS SARCASM!
^that isnt sarcastic, believe it or not (just exaggeration)

the problem is there are so many dumb people these days, its hard to tell what fake and whats real. For extra fun: watch Bill O'reilley then the colbert report and see how they sync up