[lbo-talk] Putting the 'X' Back In Xmas

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Dec 26 10:11:57 PST 2005


I was so happy to be a guest at Aretha Franklin's Christmas party at the Opera House in Detroit this year.

"Dr. Feelgood !" , I hear ya hon.

Black is Beautiful !

CB

Merry X-mas, Xppropriate the Xppropriators and

Powersthatbe Today: A Critique of X-mas for

our Party

by Tannika X

How Santa Claus is the saint of commodity fetishism or buying madness ! In an economic culture where buying mania must be instilled in people from the time they are small children, Santa is the perfect mind molestor , and his holiday the biggest on the calendar. The shopping ritual begins (in the U.S.) officially the day after Thanksgiving. This give-your-money-away festival is monthlong. "Shop until you drop as in a religious fervor" is a possible motto for it.

Yet, Christmas is certainly a season of great joy as well, real fun and happiness; there's no denying that. People really do get happy with family and friends in feasts, escaping alienation, lonliness and drudgery. It's a holiday !

A fundamental unity of opposites in the structure of our spiritual life: materialistic addiction and the birth of love in merriment, plus renewal of life with the new year, all in one cyclical celebration, the Sunday of the Year. For this civilization there is something profound about Christmas, X -mas.

Profound but not mysterious. It is a yearly, regular, routine profundity. Years creeping by at a 'petty pace, year after year until the last syllable of recorded time.' Perhaps mysterious in its myth of a virgin birth, virgin because white culture conceives of sex as dirty, sinning, soiled, a vice, so God is born without biological sex.

The great mystery or trick is not conception without biology and orgasm, but that just as much exchange of commodities and money as exchange of gifts goes on. We are a market, not a stone age economy of gift exchange. See the commodity exchange chains growing. M=C=M1=C1=M2... Token Gift exchange is used to promote commodity exchange really, but from the standpoint of celebration and ceremony, commodity exchange is promoted spiritually. Buying is a high, a good and virtuous high. Christmas cheer comes but once a year.

Well, if you do buy madly, buy in Detroit, yet think critically how through buying madness things control us and we don't control things. We become objects and things become subjects, with wills and powers as if alive. The mystery around Santa Claus helps to promote this mystical reversal of the real relations between people and the commodities they make and buy. Our greatest addiction problem is not "drugs", but our addictiion to commodities, our commodity fetishism, our buying madness, seeking to fulfill ourselves through things not people. People made the things, not elves.

Let me say it nicer. Celebration is vital. Merry, Happy to y'all. Christmas comes but once a year, and to me it means good cheer, and to everyone who likes wine and beer. Happy New Year is after that. Happy we'll be, and that's a fact. Hey, Bessie, Christmas Cheer !

The taboos on the Secrets of Joy prevent this highest happy season in Europe/America from fulfillment. There is a mystery worth reading through, a riddle that will free the Sphinx in you. How do we really make Christmas better or is it perfect already ?

Criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism, so let us begin crticism of ceremony, festival, long, long cabaret by asking some questions about Christmas, our highest of holidays, holy of holy rituals. Who was Jesus Christ ? Was he the Son of God ? Does he live still now 2005 years or so since his birth ? If the answer to either of the second two questions is "no" , are we overdoing this holiday a bit ?

What is the Santa Claus myth ? What is the relation of Santa Claus to Jesus Christ ? Is the Patriarchal Great White Father of European civilization a net giver or taker, Provider or Xploiting Xppropriator ?

Do you dare to eat a peach ?

Tragedy is less than comedy, grandeloquent logic is inferior to comedic logic, rather than a folly of despair, let us make a folly as you like it. Lets have fun, fun , fun. Swirling bodies to sweet, sweet voices, decked in Black and joys. I don't only want to pursue happiness, I desire to have it and keep it. Tell the truth, don't you ? It's what our Blues are about.

How Now, our Party of a New Type ? Send a call across the airways, radioman. Seek a wonderous song and wise. Tell us true Black Athenas, Kemetians in disguise, Sisters with voices.

quoth:

* REJOICE AND REJOIN OUR SECRETS OF JOY * :

F U N X



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