Merry Christmas. I don't believe Jesus was the son of God (though he did have a few badass ideas), but I do believe in the value of seasonal reflection, reuinion, and gift-giving. It's good shit.

However, living in secularized prolitical Friscoland as I do, my Xmas Eve might well have constisted of getting together with another moving/shaking organizer to plot a four-year takover of the Democratic party, followed by going to someone's house in the Haight to get drunk. There it's possible I might very briefly flirt with a half-Vietnamese girl -- who claims to be 17 but which I don't believe -- and then have to turn down mushky-poofky in the bathroom with a different girl, who's my own age, but who works at the same shoe store as the first girl and is from Los Angeles. After that I could settle into solid conversation about the Bush administration's media tactics and exactly how to start said takeover of the D-party. This is how is can happen on December 24th.

What of tradition? Time was me and the fam would settle around the tree in Oregon and open great presents, a whole pile garage sale packages come in the mail from Grandma Madeline. She understood kids; on some level at a certain age it's not at all about the quality of gift so much as about the quantity of boxes to unwrap. There's where a lot of the excitement generated from the experience. The frenzy of discovery.

But things change, you know. Family units are not, in this modern era, the stalwart social institutions they once were. That doesn't obliviate their invaluable status for developing humans or make them any less special and good, but it does mean there's no reason for people to stick together if they're interested in going separate ways once everyone's up and running. So my young life was built around this mass social ritual involving my Mom and Bill and my sister and me opening up presents together as a family on the eve of when most other people in our cultural world did the same. That doesn't happen anymore -- things have changed -- but I'm 25 so it's really not the end of the world. I still communicate with the people I love, and I have numerous other rituals that give my life meaning beyond what has become more and more a consumer holiday.

If I was going to ride saws about my family, I would rag on my father. He who narrowed our communications bandwidth and cut off the traditional meetup around the Summer and Turkey Day for unspecified reasions. I don't so much mind the cutoff as I do the lack of rationale. If there was a good reason, I'd respect, but the distressing thing to me is that cutting off talk with someone without giving a plausable reason is kind of... well.. bullshit. It violates my core principles, most notibly that the truth always feels better. So I don't cotton to the secrecy. It's unfortunate to think of your father as someone who does bullshit things, to loose a measure of respect.

But we move on. Life is the longest of all games and things can always come around. Consumer holidays are still an occasion for frame-breaking, which is why I really honestly respect the crooked-teethed girl who wanted to make out in the bathroom. That's goddamn honest Christmas Eve behavior. She wanted something, and she asked for it. Fuck yeah. That's how you live life as far as I'm concerned.

Not to say it's all about consumption, but the something we weirdo leftists have to realize is that sometimes it is. From time to time you just want to watch, to soak it in, to consume, to take what you want. This isn't evil or wrong, it's just not viable as an all-the-time thing; has to be balanced.

The philosophy will be a long time brewing. The point is I had a nice xmas eve. It was fun, and I met people and I talked to my sister on the phone and we'll do presents in January when she and ma and I are in Eugene together. It's all good.

Here's wishing for peace on earth. War is over if you want it.