To Shop, or Not to Shop... that is the question

My daughter wants to shop, at the mall in fact.

I can handle the mall. I know how to focus in close, like you are nearsighted without your glasses. Don’t look far down the marbled aisle at a distance, stay focused on where you are and things within close proximity. Same as if you were in Costco. While it is a ridiculous stimulus overload- if the mall experience is turned into a means to acquire a cookie, a snack an opportunity to people watch, I am all in!

But see, it is not just shopping at the mall today.
It’s shopping at the mall less than two weeks before Christmas...
need i say more? Yes. I shall.

The mall will be hell, all shopping will be hell. The parking lots will be full. People will be nuts and crazy and caffeinated on burnt tasting conglomerate coffee grabbing for the best deal to represent their love and thoughtfulness for that special someone. Somehow this capitalist wet dream, of how to make the bulk of an entire year’s profits in a couple of months, connects to Jesus?

Don’t get me wrong here. Jesus and I have no beef whatsoever.
How can you not respect someone who places the needs of the people above material wealth and greed, inspires and speaks truth to power, devotes his life to this work of transformation?

The way, in bulk, that people are bombarded with the “holiday/holler-day season is whack. Let's be honest, reports and accounts and texts and how they are used and interpreted must always be questioned and evaluated. After all, look what the bible has been through- being rewritten and edited, translated through several languages, passed through a couple thousand years, and various groups with their own intention. History in the hand of the conquerors. How did his excruciating tortuous, public murder on the cross translate into the repeated symbol people see and use regularly? I think we need to celebrate his birth and activist life and give that energy, rather than carry symbols of the tool of his death. But Jesus would declare us all nuts if he were alive to see how we twisted a day in his name for capitalist purposes. Ill *ish I tell you.
But I’m just saying, there are a few things Jesus is gonna be really pissed off about if he returns one year to the U.S. on his "birthday."

- How the pictures and statues don't even look like him.
- His Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome triggered by all the images of his crucifixion
- All the hungry, homeless and mistreated people
- What’s been done in his name, especially in regards to the way he has been misused as an icon for agendas of colonialism. Tokenized as a team mascot for an international take over league, he wouldn’t have been down with.
- How they got the date of his birth wrong.

Here’s something else about how we celebrate this day that drives me nuts! All the trees we cut down immature for this! They aren't even adolescent trees, they are newborns and infant trees. Yet they will die in how many homes this year? I remember going out and planting little trees in a tube as an elementary student. The experience affirmed that I could help do my small piece for the environment.
Conspiracy theory: maybe it was all part of getting free child labor to seed the x-mas tree market?

My mom and I stopped buying Christmas trees, when I was about my son’s current age, after we watched our last one die slowly in the living room before we threw it out alongside all the other used and discarded trees. Now this holiday seems to revolve around the list of “I want....” that isn’t always followed with the list of I “want to give...” So if you haven’t already figured out, I am a little too analytical and skeptical to get too into the holiday spirit.

But I love time off for family and friends and eating and generosity, it is always good to have that and more of it. So happy holidays, there are many to choose from, and happy new year and winter and birthday and un-birthdays to all. Be stars and light the way to a better next year.

Love and Happiness...
Ms. "i'm heading out the door to buy some stuff. What's for Sale?"