Occupy the North Pole?
Just when things couldn’t get any stranger with the occupy protesters, they’ve popped up in an unexpected place – the North Pole. Christmas pageants of the past either told of the birth of Jesus or perhaps a cute story of Santa’s workshop and of toys coming to life. In this latest rendition performed in Newtown, PA, the elves have turned against Santa and at one point he is being strangled, then prodded with a cane.
“Little did Santa know, that far and beyond a steady drumbeat, yes a movement was swelling and the masses were organizing and the disposessed were finding their strength and their voices and their power to declare we are one and we are not going to take this any more. Occupy North Pole was born.”
Nothing like co-opting a child’s holiday and promoting your own interests. Yep, Santa is the bad guy for making and delivering toys to children. What is next, rolling the local Salvation Army Bell Ringers for having the audacity to collect money for the poor? Perhaps we should sabotage any company that should dare to give gift cards to their employees during the holidays. Maybe we could throw people in jail for uttering the words “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.”
All facetiousness aside, occupy protesters need to find a better venue for airing their problems than hijacking a holiday. They’re missing the point of the holiday, which is Good Will Toward Men. Sure, there is an element of greed – it is called supply and demand. As long as people want to buy things for themselves and their family, corporations are going to try and fill those needs.
Of course, we could always try to become what Russia once was, and we could all suffer for it. Perhaps that is what would satisfy the occupy protesters. One town could make a left shoe, another town could make a right shoe, and the two would never meet unless you were an elitist working for the government. There would be scarcity of much needed items, including food. We could be shot for picking an ear of corn to feed our starving families, because after all, it belongs to the government and it needs to be re-distributed.
Be careful of what you wish for this holiday season, for you may get it.
If you haven’t already read it, read Harvest of Sorrow, a non-fiction book about Russia before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explains how the redistribution of wealth went terribly wrong, and why we should avoid it like the plague.
