the treason of the season
Optionmas: it's an aphoristic holiday.
-Optionmas is not just what other people call Christmas. Christmas is an event, and Optionmas is a process, which happens to exactly coincide with the shopping season (if you want it to), being the day after Thanksgiving through the first week of January.
-It's not that Optionmas takes the Christ out of Christmas, it's more like Christmas puts the Christ in Optionmas. Optionmas is a superposition of any revelry & merrymaking you may want to undertake, and thus is a Quantum holiday.
-Christmas has become an empty, rote holiday; the idea is to do something genuine. Optionmas started out as a resistance against Christmas music & advertising (borne of a retail job), and therefore re-canonized the traditional music (only one complete Optionmas mix exists, so far); as for advertising, Optionmas tends to fight it by steeping in it, literally hanging lots of awesome ads from magazines on the walls as decoration, thereby bringing what is intended to be unconsciously active into the light of consciosuness.
-Ever get someone a gift that isn't nearly as nice as the one they got you? Too bad, with Christmas, the singularity holiday, you are stuck with feeling inadequate. But since Optionmas is process-oriented, you could give gifts retroactively, after the fact, balancing out karma for everyone.
-It's whatever you want it to be, but it's fundamentally a matrix of revelry. Invent your own traditions, at least one more every year. Make up some way to mark the exact moment in time, and celebrate the fuck out of it because it's never coming back again.
Additions? Amendments? Comments? It is still becoming.
music: Esquivel, Space-Age Bachelor Pad
-Optionmas is not just what other people call Christmas. Christmas is an event, and Optionmas is a process, which happens to exactly coincide with the shopping season (if you want it to), being the day after Thanksgiving through the first week of January.
-It's not that Optionmas takes the Christ out of Christmas, it's more like Christmas puts the Christ in Optionmas. Optionmas is a superposition of any revelry & merrymaking you may want to undertake, and thus is a Quantum holiday.
-Christmas has become an empty, rote holiday; the idea is to do something genuine. Optionmas started out as a resistance against Christmas music & advertising (borne of a retail job), and therefore re-canonized the traditional music (only one complete Optionmas mix exists, so far); as for advertising, Optionmas tends to fight it by steeping in it, literally hanging lots of awesome ads from magazines on the walls as decoration, thereby bringing what is intended to be unconsciously active into the light of consciosuness.
-Ever get someone a gift that isn't nearly as nice as the one they got you? Too bad, with Christmas, the singularity holiday, you are stuck with feeling inadequate. But since Optionmas is process-oriented, you could give gifts retroactively, after the fact, balancing out karma for everyone.
-It's whatever you want it to be, but it's fundamentally a matrix of revelry. Invent your own traditions, at least one more every year. Make up some way to mark the exact moment in time, and celebrate the fuck out of it because it's never coming back again.
Additions? Amendments? Comments? It is still becoming.
music: Esquivel, Space-Age Bachelor Pad
posted by josh p at 9:36 AM
5 Comments:
That, my friend, is one of the best explanations of anything I have ever read. Commercialization disgusts me.
Thank you! Unfortunately, I have just been informed that me Mum's Man, whom I have great admiration for otherwise, disapproves of Optionmas, in strong favor of Christmas. To each his own, I say. I think he just doesn't understand it; that is, he doesn't realize he's celebrated Optionmas all his life, and if Christmas is how he does that, then more power to him.
~JP
ps, sorry about the word verification for comments now, i just got sick of hearing about "sexy romantic kissing" sites. :-P
I just today found my Optionmas CD and none too soon, I say. A good way to start my weekend, especially in the face of 24/7 x-mas music.
Not to say that all x-mas music is bad. Traditional stuff is great; hate the commercialized 50's leave-it-to-beaver flashback crap. Santa is Satan. Let's not teach our children about this; teach goodness, not accumulation!
I bought my copy of Rolling Stone on the day after Thanksgiving. Not trying to traditionalize, but they truly do have the best ads (well, at least the MOST fucking ads, Jesus C.). Decoration galore tomorrow!
Thank you for the written exposition of the celebration which is, in my world, a return to the basics of a winter holiday, the gathering of people in defiance of cold and boredom (winter sucks if you're alone and a farmer; get out and be with people!)
Io Satvrnalia!
-duncan-
And that is one of the best responses! I bought an Optionmas CD too. Hard Dance Mania 5 mixed by Pulsdriver. Hard German techno. LOL. The family and gathering and just enjoying simple things is what I lke best. Accumulation is a bad thing to teach and Santa must indeed e the devil.
YES!! Oh man, Optionmas finally branches out. I can't express how happy that makes me. ;-)I bet your house smells like a weird melange of perfumes & colognes, huh? Ah, the incense of the season.
Bene Saturnalia indeed.
FM! You should make a mix disc -- since it's more individually/creatively oriented, it's more in the spirit. Wooooo!
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