At first I was like:
Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt? Hells yeah!
But then the story came on and.... well, too preachy and heavy-handed.
This did not sound to me like a nice holiday spirit story with maybe a little moral to the story. This sounded like somebody with an agenda.
"Oh! people are awful! People have commercialized Christmas! Even when I force them to give they treat it as a disease, something to fear. Woe is me! But wait! The little boy and his sister! They have rekindled my faith in humanity!"
And they say that Humanity's heart grew two sizes that day.
Blech.
The mini stories were nice. I liked those. But the whole thing was too... preachy.
I do not celebrate Christmas, and I don't even like the Christmas season very much.
Not because of Black Friday and the crass commercialization of a capitalistic society's take on pagan rituals.
Because of the atmosphere. The holiday spirit.
Why can you smile at me and wish me a happy holidays today, but last week you cut me off at the corner? How come now when that little kid got on the bus and didn't have enough for the fare people helped out, but next week they'd be all upset that he's delaying them?
If you can be nice and generous for two weeks, why the hell can't you be a civil human being the rest of the year?
I hate hypocrisy and double-standards, and the holiday season
reeks of it.
I try to be nice and civil and helpful
all the time. I don't need to step it up for the holidays. I don't need to make an extra special effort to "get into the spirit." The one line that I remember for from Home Alone is when Kevin's mom gets picked up by the Polka Pack and driven all the way home. She asks him why he'd do that and he says "Sure, you know, it's Christmas time."
You schmuck. Next week you won't go out of your way to help someone like that?
[/anti-social rant]
Sorry about that. This happens to me every year around now.
I suppose that it's very nice that at least for a few weeks every year people do go out of their way to be nice, and I try to enjoy it. But I just can't help wishing that people would be like that all the time.
And hating them just a little bit for being hypocritical, self-denying jerks.Now I'm gonna stop snowing on everybody's love for the story (which was not bad, just too preachy and about the wrong thing IMO) and gonna mosey over to the Drabblecast. Because I still do like Heather and Tim.