Christmas is just around the corner, and all we have to do is get through those pesky exams and we will be free to party.
But I wonder what are we looking more forward to, Christmas break or the holiday itself?
All I know is that I love to see those twinkling lights on dorm room windows and Christmas trees in the lobby. It's therapeutic. Take a look around and you'll see that it looks a lot like Christmas.
Truth is, though, it begins to look a lot like Christmas a little earlier every year.
In fact, it seems that no sooner is the pumpkin off your porch that the Christmas decorations go up. Christmas music starts playing on the radio. Lights go up all over the city. The stores are jampacked with people getting a head start on their Christmas shopping, and inevitably insanity ensues at the local shopping mall.
This is true this year perhaps a little more than usual, considering the fact that the third generation of the Playstation has been released and Nintendo's Wii lands on the department store shelves along with that new Elmo toy that so many children are clamoring for. People go crazy to get their greedy little hands on these things, even to the point of violence. This is what has come to be known as "Christmas insanity."
After all, Schwartzenegger's "Jingle All the Way" wasn't just a movie; it was a sad look at the reality of commercialism.
Before Christmas is even here, I'm more often than not sick of it.
People shove Christmas down our throats a long time before it's an acceptable time to do so, thereby destroying any excitement and holiday cheer we would have had before the unavoidable stress of the holidays takes over.
Heaven knows, I would enjoy Christmas a lot more if it hadn't become a two-month, over-commercialized capitalist takeover completely separated from the true meaning of the holiday.
The true meaning of the holiday, of course, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Growing up in a Christian home, I have come to recognize Jesus as the reason for the season, and though I understand that not everybody believes the same way, I don't understand why it is so wrong to say those two little words that have been perfectly all right until the American Civil Liberties Union put in their two cents. Those two words, of course, are Merry Christmas. Not Happy Holidays. For me, I believe that the Christmas tree should always be the Christmas tree and not the holiday tree. Honestly, what's up with that?
I wish that during this season of insanity we could go back in time to when society was much simpler and Christmas was just a celebration of togetherness. A time when presents were not the primary or sole purpose of the celebration. People were actually able to go about the neighborhood singing Christmas carols. Now if you did that, chances are, your neighbors would turn off their lights and call the police.
Christmas was once a religious celebration, but now it has become a casualty of commercialism and bureaucracy, and that, my friend, is the sad truth of Christmas.
My hope is that as Christmas arrives, we will all keep in mind what this holiday is really about.
It's about family.
It's about love.
It's about giving, instead of getting.
It's about gathering together with friends and family and having a very Merry Christmas.
So, as Santa Claus himself would say, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
Josh Faris is a senior journalism and creative writing major and writes 'Living the College Life' for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Josh at jsfaris@bsu.edu.
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