The reason for the season

I realize that I sound like I am fairly down on Christmas, and while yes it is true that I do not particularly care for the religious aspect of the year, nor am I enamored of spending lots of time in groups of noisy people, I don't actually hate the holiday and not just because I get presents.

It's the one time of year when we have a cultural imperative to be kind and generous to everyone regardless of their circumstances, that attitude is not really all that common, we love to find ways to justify denigrating the less fortunate, in a happy coincidence, successfully doing so means we can make ourselves feel like we are not obligated to help them, more really, helping them would be counterproductive! It's pretty terrible really and we basically all do it to one level or another, it's an expression of privilege and the best we can do is recognize and fight that instinct.

But around Christmas we don't do that, as much. And yeah, it's sad that we require a major holiday to decide to be nice to people, it's sad that many of us only seem to do it because we feel like we should, or for the purpose of being recognized when doing it. But you know what?

At least it's something.

People and I do this too sometimes, get all uptight about generosity and activism, saying that the people doing it are fake somehow because they seek attention for it, or something similar, I mean, what do you think of when I say the name "Bono"? Probably something like "smug prick". But fuck at least he's doing something, there are some times when a self-serving act of generosity is still better than a real act of apathy, and this is one of them, who does it help when we mock those who don't seem to be serving the public with the level of humbleness we think they should have?

So yay for Christmas, or your seasonal holiday of choice, they all seem to have the same core values really, at their heart they still encourage us to be better than we were, and to improve the world in any way we can, that is pretty much the highest goal any of us can aspire to.