December 26

So December 26 rolls around and it ain't quite the same.

It doesn't pack the same punch as December 25. For most Americans it means going back to work. There was a time when the holidays were sacred. People got to stretch them out, grab an extra day here and there and enjoy them for what they truly are. A chance to relax, to catch your breath, to reflect.

That was accepted.

Now you have to work 18 days before the holiday and 16 after just to get paid for the holiday. Employers have taken the concept of free time and turned it into an ordeal.

And people work three part time jobs, they work everywhere and all over the place, they work Sundays like any other day, so there is no sense of specialness to weekends or holidays.

Christmas and Thanksgiving especially, these are holidays that people should be allowed to bask in. To really kick back, to stop and remember what it is like to feel like a human being instead of a crazed machine doing every employer's bidding to collect three paychecks that in total fall short of the bills due.

I am saddened by the number of people who tell me they are going to get drunk on Thanksgiving and Christmas. That is the goal. "I am going to sit home and get drunk as hell." I heard that over and over again in The Asylum as I sold mega amounts of booze to jittery looking, addled, stressed out semi-humans.

That does not sound like holiday spirit to me, it does not sound like a human being who is preparing to slide into a glorious day off and dig it for the peace it provides.

We have perfected the art of inhumanity in this country. We literally work ourselves to death. Vacations are dreams, holidays are brief breaks, there is no relief, no sense of peace.

The rest of the world doesn't operate this way and they are healthier for it.

I worked long hours on Christmas Eve day and was dutifully up at 6:30 on 12/26. Me and millions of others. I drove to work in a daze yesterday and cursed every goddamn customer who came into the store.

Retail is especially thrilling. Retail is the serial killer of holiday spirit. When you work in retail you develop a deep and abiding hatred for the holidays and for all the greedy little, beady eyed, ungrateful customers who shop with angry pretense.

The irony there is that job growth today is in part time, retail employment. Precisely the type of jobs that pay tiny wages and deliver maximum stress.

The holidays don't feel like holidays anymore. Soon all businesses will be open 365 days a year and employees will be reduced to groveling flesh blobs whose lives revolve around their horrific jobs rather than revolving around their precious lives.

I want to believe that when the economy bounces back in 30 or 40 years, and jobs outnumber potential employees, that balance will be restored. That humanity will creep back into our lives.

But once you lose something, it is gone. Employers have grabbed another piece of your existence which they will never let go of. The more control they have, the happier they are.

Regardless of health consequences, regardless of the festering anger that bubbles violently below the surface in working America, that threatens to rip this country apart.

Happy Holidays, kids.