Posted by Pinky.
Tomorrow is Christmas, isn't it? "Merry Christmas" to everybody out there! I mean, only to all of you who like to hear that, and for those of you who are offended by Christmas wishes, my apologies for even bringing it up. I'm actually not Christian, whatever that means. Actually, since I don't really know much about religion, maybe I should use my delete key to erase all this and keep myself out of trouble.
Except for one thing: I'm actually totally fascinated by how pissed off some people get when it comes to religion. I'm not religious myself, so it's not something I'm apt to understand easily. I do know that religion is a major factor contributing to people acting very, very badly towards each other. I've also heard of many examples in which religion is apparently the reason behind some very wonderful human behavior. I'd like to understand more about how people reconcile these two apparently opposite realities. Maybe this year I do some episodes about religion?
Actually it's easy to get confused about Christmas. Bunny and I hopped a truck to Las Vegas last week to check out the mall action - you should see the crazy activity at the shopping malls out there. It was intense, kind of like a frenzy. People were stressed out and spending tons of money. It reminded me of when I used to think Christmas was a holiday invented by retailers (I only found out about the Jesus-God connection like, maybe two years ago). I like the idea of giving gifts, and I like the idea of receiving gifts too. The thing is though, we don't have lots of money and what little money we do have goes directly to buy food, water, electricity, maintaining equipment, and so on. You know, the necessities. So we certainly don't have any money to spend on presents.
Which raises a logical question: If you want to show somebody that you appreciate them (during Christmas, during whenever), what's an appropriate way to do this other than buying them a present? Because judging from what we saw at the malls, there's probably no real alternative to buying stuff right?
Please e-mail me any ideas you might have. Because tomorrow is Christmas (it snuck up on me) and I don't have any presents for anybody, and I don't want them to think that I don't care about them.
~pinky