Please Give Santa His Cheque

Christmas Countdown:
11 more days before Michael Keaton becomes Daddy Jack Frost

-------------------

I got this game from one of my dear high school friends. Sound effects do help the trick, especially when they're earphones plugged in your ears. All I can say is, initally after this hand steadiness test, my hands still hasn't stopped shaking.

-------------------

Finally, I have completed the final examination for this hectic week and am now experiencing the well-deserved vacation which will be spent completing superfluous tasks which have been put off far too long - among which, is to organize my study desk. It's so unkempt that my mother warns me often that it gives my grandmother a headache seeing it - I must be considerate of others.


-------------------

Christmas is coming how joyful it will be, the family will gather round the Christmas tree, with silver tinsel shining bright the room is all aglow, there's a kiss for you and me beneath the mistletoe.


One thing my mom dislikes about me is my at times cynical nature. For one thing, I've associated Santa Clause as the mascot of consumerism - it is he who is effectively propagating the gift-giving agenda, present in most of the billboards - how can anyone not relate Santa Claus to capitalism? He does have the factory with hundreds of elves building, creating and preparing gifts all year round - Marxism! The overbearing burgeouise hidden in a bright red robe and a jingly jolly cap with his army of elf-slaves out to give the world's good children some special delivery made-in-the-North-Pole toys in exchange for the young innocents' piece in the establishment of peace and goodwill in the globe? Is that not the same as a form of conditioning - bribery in fact?

It is also brought upon my consideration that the figure of Santa Clause is, aside from its more religious roots as the famous Saint Nicholas who gave generously to needy children, a notion which capitalists - as I believe - have adopted in order to further their sales in the light of gift-giving - twisted cunningly and subtly to somehow relay their purpose of influencing an expanse in consumerism. By somehow imposing, or in more reasonable terms - conditioning people to believe Christmas is the season of sharing, it has evolved primarily as the season to buy in order to give. Although not all are financially challenged/ desperate enough to grasp the fact that gift-giving does not revolve on the quantity nor the tagprice of the gift, but of the quality of the heart of its giver.

I have experienced giving gifts without the expression nor the purpose of love, perhaps then my mind had but the aims of pride else vanity - and it shames me to think that the gift, either appreciated or not, has somehow lost an intimate part of its meaning and purpose because of my selfishness. I have experienced the lost of Christmas to consumerism, my Christmas - a time when family should be united, solemnly thankful that they are together - not competing intensely who has received more, nor just simply abiding by Christmas itineraries and traditions, nor the ego-centric act of personally getting one's share of presents and going back to seclusion to open them.

Give me back the meaning of Christmas.