When you are employed in the retail sector of the service industry, you begin to realise what massive jerkholes the entire planet is populated with. Although you are trying to do your best to help someone, they are still bitter towards you. If you fail to find something, they curse your name and march away to complain to someone else about the horrible pratfalls your store has laid before them.

It is even worse around Christmas time. In a worried frenzy, these massive and sloth-like humans trudge through the front doors bringing along their shopping cynicisms. They spill over into every department like a viscous sludge, clogging the aisleways (the arteries of the store) resulting in a full-blown heart attack. People cannot find what they need. People do not know the price for items. Employees are washed away in a sea of angry faces.

So many things about working in retail have developed a deeply seeded hatred for the holiday season. Frankly, I’m not surprised that this happened. It has been my belief that whatever job you take ruins your appreciation for the realm in which the job resides. Working at McDonalds makes you detest their food. Working in a grocery store destroys your passion for canned goods. It only seems logical that working in retail makes you detest Christmas.

And why not? Every day, customers come into the store asking if we have any more of this item and if we can get any of that item. No. It is getting too damned close to Christmas. The store has been raped and pillaged by customers bearing torches in their hands. If you’re one of the tardy scavengers who attempts to tear the rotted meat of the bones, you’re out of luck. The bones have already been picked clean.

But I’ve digressed too far from the topic I intended to cover.

Christmas has changed from what I remember. Parents push through the aisles with their children and actually have kids select their own gifts from Santa Claus.

Am I of a dying breed that actually puts genuine thought into the gift for a person? Am I the only one who appreciates the twistedly sinister art of deception when it comes to hidden stores of Christmas gifts waiting to be placed under the tree in the eleventh hour?

It seems the Christmas of thought and love poured into a selection of gifts is gone. The secrecy and the intimacy of that Christmas has been devoured by some obese stagnant cluster of bile and wax. The spirit that existed within that Christmas has been tapped and left as a withered husk.

You can see the decay in Christmas. When I was a child, the mall would be packed with children literally itching to sit on the lap of the department store Santa. He would ask your parents what you wanted ahead of time, and pretend to actually have some obsessive need to make lists and check them twice. The kids would smile and laugh. But recently, I walked through the mall and the Santa was sitting alone, in his gazebo, ringing a tiny bell. Merry Christmas Santa Claus, the spirit is dead.

Maybe it is because we live in a world where every 40-year-old man dressed as Santa Claus is feared to be a pedophile, and the only reason to purchase gifts for kids at Christmas is so they will shut up and be good for once in the year. Frankly, the thought is terrifying. I truly feel that the season has died. I’ve never been fully in tune with the Christian aspect of the season, but I could at least appreciate the good will towards man part.

I must be old fashioned. I still live in a world where the entire family (including the dog) goes out on a crisp Sunday afternoon to hunt down a coniferous tree to put in their living room. A world where decorating the tree is a family event, and each ornament is represenative of a Christmas past. Each ornament has meaning. A world where gifts are only unwrapped Christmas morning, with the entire family still in housecoats sipping various heated beverages. A world where Christmas is celebrated on Christmas and not on New Years. A world where Christmas needs to have snow. A world where people know the Scottish words to Auld Lang Syne.

A world where the Christmas spirit of a town is not as cold as the harsh tempest outside.