Tis the season for – well, for just about everything. Christmas is about oh so much more than its original charter, which was to mark the birth of Jesus Christ. As a result, Christmastime is a season of contridiction and no small amount of distress, since a good many of us wind up expending our energy on several tasks which seem to be at cross purposes. While the average Christian family is busy celebrating a birth, retailers of all persuations are hoping to celebrate a resurection -- the miraculous recovery of their bottom-lines. No wonder they've been trying to start the season earlier and earlier each year.

Of course, the family in the street try to celebrate the thing in their own way, which, if several hundred television specials are a anything to go by, has something to do with love and family-ness. As the clock ticks down towards December 25th, a peculiar desperation can be seen in people's eyes which is quite apart from the harmony and goodwill towards men that is supposed to define the holiday season. Even the most devoted donator-of-coats suddenly appears to be willing to slice into a stranger's eyeball with a razor blade at the slightest infraction of our already tenuous social contract. Keep that in mind when you decide to write a check in the "express" checkout at the supermarket ("I had to stab him officier, the sign says cash only!")

Perhaps we might forgive the emergance of our basest insticts, due to the fact that it's been a tough year already, and the last thing we need is all this additional hubbub thrown at us at the end of it. But it would hardly be fair to do so, considering that this is also the season when our most laudable intentions come to the fore. It's during this brief moment that the better angels of our nature feel safe enough to poke their heads out from behind whatever pieces of furniture they've been hiding behind during the summer months.

So what is Christmas then? Is it a time for all people (well, American Christian ones anyway) to reflect on the wonderful squishiness of hearth and home? Is it a time to celebrate the birth of an important religious figure? (As long as you're not a Jehovah's Witness) Is it a time to catch up on the shopping because all the shops will be closed on the 25th? Is it a capitalist fuck-fest? Yes. It's all of these things and more. America, as the largest and most diverse of the late Western powers, is a mixed up assembelege of various cultures, ethinicities, beliefs, and social classes. Given all of that it's obvious that nothing would suit us more than a national holiday to celebrate all of the conflicts, contradictions, and double-standards, that make us such a wonderful country (or the most hellish abomination since pre-Christian Rome, depending on how you look at it).

Our proposed, "Day of National Contradictions" has to have some specific date (ironically, perhaps); why not Christmas? Over the past 2000 years or so, December 25th has seen its share of holidays. It was holy to the worshipers of Mithras; it was the Roman holiday of Saturnalia; now it's Jesus's birthday (even though the Man himself was probably born in April or August or something). No doubt it'll be many more things over the next thousand years.

Let us celebrate our "Day of National Contradictions" by taking up opposition against something which has had no opposition before. Hey, we could even start with the rampant greed and corruption of our nation's largest corporations? No silly reindeer mugs that only get drug out once a year (you can't wash the taste of egg nog out of them anyway). No cheap Chinese knick-knacks from Wal-Mart (the money you save will just wind up going to the government to pay for their worker's healthcare). Of course that means no presents for anybody. Tell the kids before they wake you up at 4am on Christmas day – they might cry a little, but at least you'll get to sleep in -- and stick it to those Wall Street bastards at the same time.

-B. C. Silvia