Happy Holidays!

This week will be busy for many of us, as we scramble around and try to meet society's expectations. How many of us have an image of what we are 'supposed' to be doing this week? Shopping, baking, wrapping,visiting,cleaning? How well does this image match what you really want to be doing, or what you are actually doing? What do your holidays look like compared to the way you hype it up in your mind? Do you enjoy the process of building it up, then crashing in a consumption-induced denoument? hell, I don't.
This year, I intend to finish my Christmas day with a candle light vigil in silence on a bridge. People ask how I can do this on CHRISTMAS for pete's sake. I think that Christmas is a good time to mourn our losses, consider our paths, and our choices in reflective silence. To think about the stacks of things we have received, and the people who have nothing. People who have less food than what I will scrape into the can. People who are alone, forgotten, or ignored. People that will decide this Christmas between heat, food, or a little something for their kids. People that have watched their lives and families transform away from the idealic structure they had planned. On Christmas, I consider those that began life with promises but now cast off their hopes after years of dissappointment. The candles are about all of these things, and for those whose lives were lost, whose families miss them so horribly.
I don't even know what the holidays mean to me anymore.
Often, its about the pressure of shopping and people-pleasing. I try to incorporate some measure of meaning- but I am not a spiritual Christian, I am a 'cultural' Christian who grew up with these holidays but really have no compelling reason to continue them other than following the herd. I have made efforts to 'shop with conscience' this year, avoiding box stores, but have once again failed. I try to support our local artists, potters, painters, sculptors, weavers, quilters, knitters, macrame-plant hanger makers... But I cannot boast of a pristine pocketbook. I even have a few receipts from the dreaded mall. From scary places like Aeropostale' and The Limited. (I have failed you, liberal muse)
So what have you done this year that you feel dirty about? What have you done that violates your oh-so-principled life? Come on, open your wallets and purses and purge your conscience. Fess up! How have you given your money to 'the man'?

While you consider your scrooginess, weigh in on my BitchPod Challenge at Hydrogen and Stupidity, just for some levity. - Lily