Happy Pretend-You-Give-a-Shit-So-Your-Family-Won't-Get-Mad-at-You-Day!

Now that Christmas is over, I feel like I can post this without ruining anyone's day. I don't much care for the holidays. I can almost hear the booing and calling of "Grinch!" and "Scrooge!" now, but I don't care. It seems to me that all the holidays are any good for is bringing out the hypocrite in all of us.

Holidays for me (and I think quite a few others out there) mostly mean spending time with people I have no desire to spend time with and pretending that it doesn't bother me to watch them gnaw on the carcass of someone who I actually would have liked to spend time with. Don't get me wrong, there are some members of my family whose company I actually enjoy , but when it comes to those people I don't really need a holiday as an excuse to see them.

I don't understand why it is that every major holiday somehow ends up centered around a dead animal. In most cases the very idea of killing completely contradicts what the holiday is supposed to be about. We talk about being grateful and charitable and kind while ripping apart the body of an animal who was never shown the tiniest bit of kindness.

Thanksgiving is my most despised holiday, for obvious reasons. Every time I hear someone call it "Turkey Day" it takes every bit of restraint I have to stop myself  from grabbing em* by the throat (but I do restrain myself because I'm a vegan and vegans don't believe in violence.) Thanksgiving is supposed to be about being thankful for all of the good things in our lives. So how do we celebrate? by taking the life of someone who never had one single thing to be thankful for. Although I suppose in reality that fits right in with the whole history of Thanksgiving. So perhaps Thanksgiving is actually one of the less hypocritical holidays.

By the way, if anyone else out there is fed up with a typical Thanksgiving I would recommend going to the Celebration FOR the Turkeys at Farm Sanctuary next year. I went this year and it was wonderful.

A close second to Thanksgiving is Christmas. First of all, I am not religious in any way so celebrating a religious holiday automatically makes me feel like a hypocrite. What really bothers me about it though is the fact that, no matter how much people care about being in the "Christmas Spirit" they never seem to apply that to nonhuman animals. People give money to the salvation army, donate toys to charity, spend absurd amounts of money buying presents for their friends and families but still go ahead and have their ham for dinner. Don't they realize that the pig they're eating could have used some of that generosity? I'm not saying that people should stop doing things to help other humans during the holidays. I think it's great that the holidays inspire people to be charitable. I just want them to take other species into consideration and realize that they deserve a little good will too.


So yes, perhaps I am a grinch but I think I have a pretty good reason for it. I don't hate the holidays just because I feel like it and, no matter what some of you out there may think, I do care about people. I just happen to care about animals as well and when I see them so blatantly disregarded it kind of ruins any good feelings I might have had about the holidays. Also, just so you know I don't actually have anything in particular against New Year's.

* Not a typo, but my idea for a singular, sexless pronoun. I plan to discuss this in a future post.