Thoughts on Christmas and New Years

I remember a time when I would eagerly count down the days until Christmas came, waiting impatiently for the mystical Santa Claus to appear and deliver his various Christmas gifts to me on the 25th of December. It used to be a time of complete and unbridled happiness, and no, I'm not overstating that. However, as time progresses and one grows older, discovering certain truths about your childhood beleifs, Christmas becomes just another day in the year, except you are presented with gifts by people and are expected to give gifts to others. Things reverse polarities, where I would have found myself counting down days until Chrismas arrived, this year I found myself shocked to find that Christmas was three days away, and I had nothing done in the way of shopping for my girlfriend. Another slight example of how things switch around between childhood and adolescence is gifts. When I was a kid, and I'm positive that most of us think this way, I hated getting clothes as a gift from my relatives. Now I find myself asking for clothes as opposed to whatever else they might imagine I want.
Changing pace for a minute, I would like to point out how the Christmas Holidays change from beacons of happiness to ultimately depressing slumps. Consider it like this; you've lost faith in your shiny, polished idea of a benevolent gift-giver, your relatives don't know you well enough or don't see you often enough to know what gift to get you, and so they just give you money to make up for it. You find out that Christmas is a shallow holiday of give and receive, emphasizing on your own reception. Turning on the tv presents a barrage of holiday themed ads desperately trying to get you to buy their product. Christmas can bring me down like no other thing, making me just regret the fact that all the people around me feel the "Christmas Spirit" and i can't. Every year, my mother plays the same CD, a christmas collection Cd. John Lennon, Live Aid, thta kind of stuff. When I was younger I couldn't really understand the lyrics, but it certainly set the mood. That music meant it was christmas time. We played the same songs this year, but now I understand the lyrics and I can't identify how they set off those Christmas sparks inside me. I wasn't satisfied with just being devoid of Christmas spirit, so I asked my immediate family if they felt it. They all said yes. This meant to me that the spirit isn't determined by age. I still haven't found out what exactly causes it, or lack of it.
Connecting this to the material we have discussed in class, I can see clearly the corporate strings attached to the Santa puppet. The entire concept of Santa Claus is a machination of the Coca Cola company to sell more of heir own product. Our parents perpetaute the lie because it has become imbedded in our American folk culture, a magical being who rides around the world and delivers presents to "good" children and coal to "bad" children. Folk culture present in this ritual is the concept of good and evil, though perhaps a bit downplayed. Santa, the judgement figure, declares that good children recieve gifts as a reward of their goodness, and bad children should get coal to serve as a punishment that isn't too harsh, but a reminder for them to get back on track. Seeing as Santa does not actually exist, no parent gives their kid coal, so every Christmas-celebrating kid in the world is led to beleive they are good. It's like another one of those self esteem-boosting rituals, much like the gold star. It is a representation of people's constant need of affirmation that what they are doing is right and they should feel good about themselves.