Toward Ecosophy

To my great misfortune, I had to go out to buy groceries today. That's normally not so traumatic a process, but of course the holiday season is upon us, and that means that the auditory glurge dribbling down on everyone's heads from the omnipresent loudspeakers in the grocery market was Christmas music.

No, let's take that back, it was holiday music. I didn't hear a single song referencing the kid who was born in a stable in Bethlehem. It was all about gifts and snow and cheer and boughs of holly, gummed to death by singers who'd apparently just rinsed their mouths in corn syrup, and accompanied by the kind of instrumentalists who weren't good enough to keep their previous jobs playing elevator music. Bland, pasty, and fake, it slithered with plastic sentiment to a degree notably worse than last year's -- and last year's was pretty bad. 

Of course it didn't help that every five minutes, by the clock, one of those canned female voices trotted out the same three lectures on social distancing et al., in a tone so full of insincere emotion that dishonest used car salesmen would gulp in disbelief. All in all, it made me want to cultivate a taste for death metal. 

So I'd like to extend my condolences to my Christian readers, who've had one of their two holiest days hijacked by this sort of bovine waste product, and since this holiday season has been cancelled by order of a variety of governments, I'd like to raise the possibility that maybe it's time for a little pushback. No, it probably won't work to try to get the grocery markets to stop having their loudspeakers drool on the shoppers, but maybe there are other options -- Santa-free zones?  The Ebenezer Scrooge Appreciation Society?  Krampustide celebrations? Inquiring Druids want to know.