Children delight in the holidays. Their eyes light up at the smell of a fresh Christmas tree. They squeal with joy at the sound of Christmas carols. They stare at every toy advertisement they see in print and on television, memorizing every detail, the better to explicitly set out their desires in their painstakingly assembled lists for Santa. They sit up all night Christmas eve, unable to sleep, trembling with excitement over the bounties they will receive come morning. They are insane with greed.

This childhood indoctrination is at the source of our inability to crack asunder the fetters of Christmas and enjoy the winter season free from the tyranny of costly and meaningless compulsive festivities. As children, we are conditioned year after year to associate the Holiday season with unearned gratification of our desires. As we make the transition to adulthood, the pleasurable memories remain with us, and compel us to endure the living hell of Christmastime "for the sake of the children", whom we think we are doing a favor by putting them through the same consumerist rituals as the ones we went through.

This assumption needs to be questioned. Why manipulate children into deleriums of selfish glee every year if the end result is that, as adults, they will submissively muddle though six weeks of soul-rending agony, late November through early January, year in, year out? Step back. Think for a minute what we are doing. Think about how immoral it all is. Christmas is child abuse. As surely as if we were duct-taping our children to their beds and gouging out their eyeballs with a corkscrew. We must stop this sinister conditioning of fresh-minded, gentle children into beaten, hopeless adults who compulsively enact the same annual march of misery. We must abolish Christmas.