Mea culpa. We were those people that I despise. And I thank whatever God will listen that those Catholic priests diddled those little kids and got 3/4 of my family to no longer go to church, to question the authorities, and to take giving, receiving, praying, and believing all a little more seriously. It's all so ironic. Now that we no longer belong to any organized authoritarian doctrinal church, everyone is more spiritual and more human, more reasonable and more measured. I beg anyone who will listen, do not give up your spiritual authority to anyone else, do not give up your hard-earned cash to greedy, faceless behemoth corporations, get more involved in your locality, slow down, enjoy life, take a walk, bake some cookies, and don't look for fulfillment from a box with a barcode.

Well, whatever festival you celebrate, may it be blessed.

Not Christmas: christmas, or x-mas, or the holidays or whatever. Christian Americans don't celebrate Christmas, anymore, it seems. They shop until they're stupid, which explains a lot. No, I declare the Great American Year End Sale Holiday is now and forever known lowercase-ly as 'christmas'. It's not a religious holiday anymore, unless shopping is a religion, which it is. Americans won't even buy the uselss crap they pile up (how about them self-store places, huh?) from local companies or local firms that make local goods. No, they have to worship at the big box stores owned in super-secret enclaves like Bentonville selling low-cost lead-infused toys and high-quality slave-made clothes from shithole countries that end in "-sia". Or, they spend what little time they have left at their soon-to-be-outsourced jobs surfing the internet for the last penny of savings and free shipping on something that will break and they will throw away in less than a month. And so, I repeat,

Fuck christmas.

Hillcrest Guest House, St. John, US Virgin Islands
http://www.HillcrestStJohn.com