A Real Christmas Display – No Greed, No War On Christmas

I’m going to start with a rant, but this is actually about re-finding a real spirit for the Holidays, so hang with me.

2013 is the year Christmas finally became meaningless to mean. The shopping season gobbled up Thanksgiving. The usual complaints about the nonexistent War on Christmas were extra stupid (but I’m sure moved books and sold merch), and we got to see a newscaster argue that a holiday figure partially based on Turkish Saint and a Mediterranean Jew were white guys and that this somehow mattered for the kids.

Frankly, I was feeling tired, cynical, and fed up. I like the holidays, I like the fun, the festivity, the feasting, and the gift-giving. I like the gratitude and the simple things.

Not so found of the ever advancing Shoggoth of BS that Christmas has degenerated into over time. Somehow it seems to get stupider and more commercial each year, and we’ve been warned about the commercialism since those old Charlie Brown Christmas specials.

Then, something got me thinking.

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The Kinds Of Greedy People

Greed is a disease.  It cannot be sated, it consumes and consumes until there is nothing left.  Greed knows no boundaries.  Because of this the wise and sane recognize its dangers and proscribe limits on ambitions.

There are those who have given themselves over to greed, who can never have enough, whose cravings know no end.  There are two types of these greedy people.

The foolish and greedy, enslaved to their drives, grasp and seek more, often without plan or prudence or forethought.  They defeat themselves more often than not.

The clever and greedy are shrewd.  They wish much, but they know that their efforts can easily be defeated, and that their greed is an obvious flaw.  Even if they do not acknowledge such things in their minds, they do so in their hearts.

The clever and greedy find naturally allies in the foolish and greedy.  The foolish and greedy can easily be led to support the clever and greedy in their campaigns, in their graspings, in their crusades.  The foolish and greedy, led by their desires constantly, are thus easily manipulated by those whose greed is paired with shrewdness, even though the foolish and greedy are but tools to the ambitions of those smarter than they.

It takes little to entice those with greed but little sense.  They are easily led by being told they are like those who are greedy but clever, that they too will be as well off as they, that they will also acquire much.  They forget that the greedy have no allies or loves, merely tools.

The clever and greedy may even say their sickness is a virtue, and the foolish and greedy will agree with them.

Thus the clever and greedy require the foolish and greedy to feed the fire of their desires, and the foolish and greedy never realize they are but fuel until all is ash.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.