Tag: Christmas

Xmas 2025

BC Electric Show Room with xmas decorations and "Seasons Greetings"
B.C. Electric Show Room 1930’s
**SEASONS GREETINGS**

Yet another orgy of crass consumerism has come and gone.

Scott used to call this “socks ‘n’ underwear day”

When your father kept you, not out of love, but in order to “control the costs” xmas day isn’t really much to get work up about.

The thing about Richard is not so much the cheapness, it was the total emotional disconnect. He didn’t know me and he didn’t know Scott. As such he was completely at odds with what Scott and I would have been interested in.

Xmas holidays weren’t a time for family. Xmas holidays were a time to stay out of Richard’s grasp.

Sure, I acknowledge that his mother was cruel. He even said as much himself. However if he had cared he would have gone the extra mile to not have been anything like his mother. And honestly, if he really cared and he knew how fucked up his mother was why the fuck did he have her raise my brother and I?

My uncle Doug, who was my father’s younger brother, was the absolute polar opposite to Richard so far as personality goes. Doug would smuggle presents from our mother into the house by claiming they were from him.

And there really wasn’t anything in the way of xmas dinners as kids. Once we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in ’83 we went out to Sue’s parent’s house for xmas in ’83 and I think ’84. But that was it.

As I mentioned before, we flew to Toronto for the xmas holidays of ’82. I met my paternal grandfather that xmas. Arthur Herman Gill was his name. It wasn’t until 2011 that I would learn that Richard was trying to butter up his father to take care of me. This would explain the testy relationship between Richard and his father. And this would explain why we never went to see Arthur again even when we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in April of ’83 even though we frequently went out to Oshawa to see Sue’s parents or even just to go shopping at Knob Hill Farms.

Probably explains why I don’t get too worked up over xmas.

When I look around at Xmas, all I see is crass consumerism and faux outrage from those who wear their religion on their sleeve for others to see.

Prior to Coca-Cola creating the modern day Santa Claus as an advertising campaign and consumerism taking over the holiday the church actually frowned upon tying the birth of their lord with consumerism. That’s actually where “Happy Holidays” came from.

Even ChatGPT gets it.

Short answer: because that part completely wrecks the outrage narrative.

Longer, more honest answer 👇

Historically, Catholic Church has never been cool with turning the birth of Christ into a sales event. The Church’s problem with modern Christmas isn’t “people won’t let us say Merry Christmas,” it’s that Christmas got hollowed out and refilled with cash registers.

A few key points that almost never make it into the rage-bait loop:

1. Christmas was meant to be liturgical, not commercial

For most of Christian history, Christmas was:

  • a religious feast day
  • surrounded by Advent (fasting, restraint, preparation)
  • focused on Mass, charity, and humility

Open-air markets, flashing signage, and “BUY MORE JOY” campaigns would have been seen as… frankly vulgar.

2. The Church repeatedly warned against merchandising Christ

Well before modern culture wars, Catholic teaching criticized:

  • profiting off sacred symbols
  • using holy days for personal enrichment
  • turning worship into spectacle

There’s a reason the Bible story everyone knows is Jesus flipping tables in the temple — that wasn’t subtle.

Selling indulgences nearly tore the Church apart once already. They’re painfully aware of how bad optics around money can get.

3. “Put Christ back in Christmas” is a modern slogan — not a traditional one

That phrase didn’t come from medieval theology. It came from:

  • 20th-century advertising culture
  • reactionary politics
  • identity signaling

Ironically, the people shouting it the loudest are usually doing so under:

  • inflatable Santas
  • corporate jingles
  • Amazon trucks
  • credit card debt

If you actually followed historic Catholic attitudes, you’d be closer to:

“Take the cash registers out of Christmas.”

4. Culture-war Christmas needs a villain — nuance won’t sell

Rage bait works because:

  • “They banned Merry Christmas” is simple
  • “Capitalism hollowed out a religious feast and the Church warned against it” is complicated

Cable news can’t sell ad slots on a lecture about late-stage consumerism cannibalizing sacred time.

5. Quiet irony: the Church lost this fight decades ago

The truth nobody likes admitting:

  • Christmas is now economically indispensable
  • Retail calendars matter more than liturgical ones
  • December 25th belongs to supply chains, not bishops

So instead of fighting commercialization head-on (which they’d lose), many churches retreat to symbolism and slogans.

Bottom line

If this argument were being made honestly, it wouldn’t be:

“You’re not allowed to say Merry Christmas.”

It would be:

“Why are we using the birth of a religious figure to sell SUVs, phones, and scented candles?”

But that question makes everyone uncomfortable — especially the people pretending to defend tradition while standing inside a mall.

If you want, I can also break down how Christmas went from a minor feast to a retail keystone, or why Saturnalia did the same thing in ancient Rome, just with better wine and fewer credit cards.

Hoping that you never got what you wanted.

As a kid I learnt an odd behaviour of mine that still sort of continues on to this day.

However, now that I more or less have control over my life I find that I don’t often fall prey to this line of thinking. But it’s still there in the deep dark recesses of my defective brain.

When I was a kid, especially living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton I had developed a perverse way of dealing with Richard’s stinginess and hatred-by-proxy of Marie.

When it would get close to xmas or my birthday I would secretly start wishing that I wouldn’t get what I had asked for.

And it worked.

Never once did I ever get what I had asked for, and by wishing that I wouldn’t get it I actually felt in control.

Looking back it was obviously a really weird coping mechanism, but it did allow me to cope none the less.

This obviously wasn’t a very healthy coping mechanism.

I would often pretend to not be interested in the latest and greatest thing.

And that would often set me on a collision course with the popular kids who thought that I was just trying to be “smarter than them” or who were convinced that I was just a fucking faggot loser.

At school the kids were into the Blue Jays, the Maple Leafs, the Argonauts, “pro” wrestling was a major thing in southern Ontario back then. The kids at school would have the latest jerseys, or other sports related paraphernalia.

I had nothing like this, I don’t even think my brother had anything contemporary back then.

When we lived in Edmonton from 1978 to 1983 this was practically the top of the Edmonton Oilers dynasty. Richard never once took us to a hockey game.

Our grandmother had actually taken us to some Edmonton Eskimos games with tickets that she’d get from the Bissell Centre for disadvantaged families.

Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But in the 7-1/2 years that we lived in Toronto on Canadian Forces Base Downsview not once did we ever go to a hockey game.

And no. There was no watching hockey with Richard. If you wanted to watch hockey with Richard, that was fine, you just had to shut the fuck up and not say a single fucking thing. And don’t ask him stupid fucking questions either.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t play hockey as a kid. On CFB Namao my grandmother had enrolled me in beavers, swimming, hockey, bowling, and basketball.

Me before the fallout of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Apparently I never played team sports.
There was no team photo for 1979 – 1980 as I was kicked out of hockey
as a result of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse Scandal

“But Bobbie, what if your father had no money, he was in the Canadian Forces”.

Sure, the pay was bad in the ’60s and the ’70s. But this was offset by the lowered housing costs of living in the PMQs on base. Also, ranks tended to be very close in pay grade. Privates made one rate, Corporals made another, Master Corporals made another rate, Sergeants made another.

I don’t have access to the historical pay schedules. But even going with the current pay schedule the ranks make basic monthly rates based primarily upon rank, but modified by number of years at that rank level and any special qualifications.

The end result is that my father as a Master Corporal wasn’t making $1k per month while the Master Corporal living next door was making making $2.5k per month.

Where’d his money go?

Not to my brother or I. That was for sure.

I know he had no issue spending money on the latest and greatest knickknack or computer toy for himself.

Was he paying child support on the sly? This honestly wouldn’t surprise me in the least. He did have a habit of skirt chasing.

Was he paying an out-of-court settlement for one of his drinking and driving collisions? Again this is a possibility as his insurance would have been very expensive given the number of collisions that he had over the years.

Other than that I don’t know.

But Bobbie, it’s his money, he can spend it any way that he wants to. You can’t tell him what to spend it on.

That may be true. But he should have worn a condom. Or pulled out. Or even just have asked for oral or a handjob. Would have obviously saved a lot of grief.

You don’t get someone pregnant and then wash your hands of the responsibility claiming that your responsibility ended at conception.

You don’t take your hatred of your former spouse out on your children as if being cruel to your kids was going to make your former spouse realize how much she inconvenienced you by leaving you to look after the children you fathered.

So yeah, birthdays mean nothing to me. And xmas means nothing as well.

I won’t stop you from celebrating.

But hopefully you understand why I don’t celebrate.

And no. Please don’t think that you’re going to “fix me” by inviting me to xmas parties or birthday parties. Nothing makes me feel more awkward and out of place. And it’s so fucking tiring pretending like I fit in or like I’m enjoying myself.