Clearing the Way

Time to get cynicism about Christmas trappings out of our system - Winter Solstice coming up, can't be cynical about that! Let's indulge in a mini cynic fest today:

“Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? ”
― Bill Watterson, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes

“I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly... and other things ending in olly.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“As joy dwindles with the years
I wistfully recall
When the Christmas tree
Looked ten feet tall
And the presents under it
Seemed endless
And more
Than mere wrapping paper.”
― Justin Wetch, Bending The Universe

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.
― E.B. White, The Second Tree from the Corner

Deep breaths......

“The rest of the year, I wondered if the point of Christmas was just spending money and getting fat and opening gifts. Indulging.
But when Christmas finally comes, and that warm, tingly, mints-and-sweaters-and-fireplace-fires feeling gathers in the bottom of your stomach, and you're lying on the floor with all the lights off but the ones on the Christmas tree, and listening to the silence of the snow falling outside, you see the point. For that one instance in time, everything is good in the world. It doesn't matter if everything isn't actually good. It's the one time of the year when pretending is enough.”
― Francesca Zappia, Made You Up