Every time Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” comes on the radio when I’m driving, my car drifts out of the left-hand lane into oncoming traffic. At first, I couldn’t figure it out, but then I realized that I was subconsciously adjusting my hold on the wheel to put myself out of my misery. The other day, it finally happened for the first time this season, and I died a little more inside.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, when we’re all supposed to love each other and be kind, when we trample an employee to death at a Long Island Wal-Mart in a Black Friday bid to get our Christmas shopping out of the way. When we drive by the homeless man shivering in his cardboard box off the I-94 E service ramp on our way to a family gathering. When we lounge around a tree we killed amid a global environmental crisis and we open presents while the world tears itself apart on live television in the background.
The illegitimate child of Christianity and Paganism is a mythical prediabetic socialist named “Santa Claus” who entices little children with presents. A centuries-year-old man who spies on minors while they’re sleeping is welcomed with open arms into people’s homes, but the guy who relieves himself in the woods when he thinks nobody’s around is slapped on the sex-offender registry. Hypocritical much? We even offer him refreshments—although he’s canonically morbidly obese.
If “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” was an accurate portrayal of what happens when you break into a house on U.S. soil, “Santa” would have met his demise at the barrel of a Winchester Model 70. Perhaps that’s why he hardly ever makes it to our impoverished children in our rural towns and our inner cities.
Humanity is evolving. We have cures for deadly diseases, nuclear weapons capable of mass destruction and every tool we could possibly need on miniature computers stowed away in our back pockets, and yet it is paradoxically declining at the same time. Apathy is as merciful as we can be. At least it numbs the wound before it goes in for the kill.
