Christmas can often be painfully upbeat: the nauseating repetition of the same 10 Christmas songs played in every store and business, the same 10 cherished Christmas movies playing on a continuous loop on television for 3 weeks solid, and cheerful dingbats wearing Santa hats in public as early as mid-November.

Last year, friend, Blogadilla reader, and Finnish goddess Elina sent me this fine quote from novelist Neil Gaiman, which helps to balance the equation:

“Nicholas was… older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own twittering tongue, and conducted incomprehensible rituals when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, and leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho. Ho. Ho.”

Tags: evil, holidays, Quotes, reader submission
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