I love that the neighbors have their ostentacious flashing rooftop presents with the Santa head slowly popping up and down. I love the inflatable snowglobes (a recent phenomena, comes with its own generator) lighting up suburban lawns. Frank Sinatra music melts through the air when I stroll through Wal-Mart, and my heart lilts a little. Yeah, it’s totally superficial, sappy, and commercialized. So what? It’s fun.

Yeah, despite the name, not everyone associates Christmas with Christianity. The holiday actually originates from various winter festivals here in Europe. Solstice, Yule, the worshiping of Thor, Saturn and the Sun all predate Christ and were observed on the same date—or roughly thereabouts. For most of these, gift giving was part of the ritual. And so was decorating the tree! ….but perhaps more so here in the northern parts.

The Christian festival came much later, and perhaps early Christians chose the date to blend-in with other festivals to avoid persecution.

These days, although most people no longer worship deities, they’ve retained the pagan ritual of swapping presents and decorating trees. I guess we humans are essentially traditionalists. Newer and more trendy notions, such as the Christian sense of Christmas, haven’t fully caught-on yet.

Having said all that, our fake tree alreaedy has lights built into it.

#25. Kimmo, how true it is of Americans to overcommercialize the holiday. So many blow-up Santas, snowmen, and Grinches, but very few nativity scenes. Very depressing in some regards.

In the United States it is logical from the business point of view to encourage the acquisition of the seasonal conifer weeks ahead of time in order to whip up and maintain the shopping frenzy at a maximum level.

No, I want to kill myself over the fact that people admire and revere that woman enough to buy her record. She is the very definition of the word “useless”. She’s butt-ugly too.

Saddam’s dead btw. Happy new year. I’m not pro death penalty but that dude just had to go before the Iraqians fuck it up and lose him

What, kill yourself over some pissaliisa billionaire?

“I hate glitter and glitz. Like, a lot.”
“They are a real plague, aren’t they?”
“Ms. Hilton released a record last summer. It was a hit. Knowing that makes me want to kill myself.”
“Touché.”

My kind of person, definitely!

P.s. Not that anybody’s interested, I’m kind of worried that I just ingested a fair amount of tin foil along with my kebab…

Ms. Hilton released a record last summer. It was a hit. Knowing that makes me want to kill myself.

In a way, I think that the jealous and über-egalitarian nature of Finns is partly to blame. Finns eat up this stuff about useless celebrities because it enforces the idea that famous people or people who have otherwise “made it” have done so only by accident and are in no way superior to the next person. What we really don’t want to hear about is people who have clearly made it as a result of their talent and hard work. Sports stars are the exception to the rule.

It is interesting that out there in the big world there are these salarakas-wannabes as well. Does anyone remember Hugh Grant’s prostitute? Exactly.