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There's a good reason why I hate every single holiday on the calendar: people and Corporate America take holidays too far. There's getting into the spirit of a holiday like Christmas, and then there's just taking it way too far, and even then there are just holidays we could do without. April Fool's is one of them. It's senseless as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I just don't have the right sense of humour. So? It's not like we need one special day out of an entire year of 365.28 days specially designated for joking. You can joke around any day of the year you want. There are 365.28 of them. Why does there have to be one specific day designated for them?

There are holidays that I just don't see the real point of: April Fool's Day, Labour Day, St. Patrick's Day (maybe that one has a point, but it's been so butchered over history that even I don't know, which is quite saddening).

And furthermore... (Warning: long rant that changes subjects several times coming) This first paragraph is to you, Corporate America.

Stop commercializing the holidays. People are forgetting the real reason we have certain holidays. Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks and spending time with family. Christmas is a time for family and miracles. Halloween is a time for celebrating fear, fright, and the dead (Mexicans call it "El Dia de los Muertos" or "The Day of the Dead"). Independence Day is a time for celebrating the United States' independence from Great Britain. Valentine's Day is a time for celebrating love and expressing that love. Mother's and Father's day are when you honour thy parents. And for you Christians out there who watch my journal, Good Friday and Easter are a time for celebrating Christ's resurrection. None of those holidays are a time where you can go out and 'buy' your family's love. You can't 'buy' God's love. (Yes, I know I'm not religious. I'm just making a point.) You shouldn't have to buy your family's love in the first place. You shouldn't have to buy 'togetherness' or 'holiday spirit'. If you have to buy gifts for someone you love to get them to love you back or if you have to buy a lot of stuff to get into the holiday spirit, then something's just not right in that picture; something's not right at all.

I personally do not like people who take holidays too far. Those are the people who force others to have to endure holidays instead of celebrate them. Those are the people who force others to have to over-celebrate holidays and force others beyond their comfort zone. At this rate, I'm not even going to care about holidays by the time I graduate from Uni. As far as I'm concerned, holidays are good for just two things: time off from the stresses of everyday life and family togetherness.

All the other extra frills are just too much for me to even care about or even desire. I don't even want to have to endure them. I'm not much of a fan of 'frills'. I like things to be simple. A car gets me from A to B. A cell phone is just for calling people. My home theatre system is only 5.1 channel surround sound, it has an AM/FM radio tuner, and it can play DVDs and music CDs. All I need it for is to improve the sound quality from the crappy TV I have in my bedroom. That's all for which I really need it; so as basic as it is, it suits me. I've even started using basic text editors because I just don't need all the fancy frills of OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office. The only things where I like frills are my desktop computer and SimCity 4.

I'm just not a terribly huge fan of frills unless I'm the one adding them. Even then, they serve a purpose. Extra frills on my journal CSS? That's CSS and Gimp practice right there. A personal website? HTML, CSS, and Javascript practice. Extra frills and mods in SimCity? Changes the dynamics of the game, making it so that I have to figure it out when something goes wrong. How about extra frills on a 3D design? That's to improve the visual aspects and make the design more pleasing to the eye. Extra stuff has to have a purpose as far as I'm concerned.

I dunno. I just don't like the holidays. *shrugs* As far as I'm concerned, I just seem to be better off without them. I may be a humbug. I may be a sourpuss. I may be a spoil sport. I just don't care. Modern life has butchered the holidays so much there's no point to them anymore. It's all just "BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! YOUR FAMILY WILL LOVE YOU!!" now. I could care less for that. Therefore, I could care less for the holidays.

If I ended up wasting a few precious minutes of your life, I have no sympathy. You're the one who bothered to read this far.

That's all I have to say for now.

Due to the deviantART April Fool's joke raping the hell out of my journal's footer, it has been removed until further notice. Thank you.