Yeah. It’s Christmas time again. Even saying it pains me. Christmas is just not my thing, and not because my vegetarian tofurkey is almost as bad as it sounds.

But there are kids in my house and huge swaths of the last three years have sucked beyond measure. So I am starting to wrap my head around accepting, no, embracing hideous decorations and overblown consumerism. You know, for the children (who call me the Grinch at home).

But then I started talking to some of the Freedumb conspiracy folks online. And boy, I thought the New World Order was scary, with all the tracking chips in the mandatory vaccines. It turns out that Christmas is pretty messed up. 

It’s not like I wasn’t already skeptical. If there’s one thing I learned during my B.A. in religious studies and later theology school it’s that Jesus was most likely born in July (according to most biblical scholars). I’d always passed this fact off as part of my religion taking over and Christianizing celebrations in the pagan calendar, because that’s my religion's thing, historically.

Turns out that factoid is just the tip of the Christmas conspiracy iceberg!

Take Santa for example. The dude has a naughty list, which is basically a list of little future freedom fighters who refuse to comply with tyranny. But the sheeple kids, after succumbing to all the mainstream media brainwashing, will be given stuff magically for free. This teaches socialism and therefore Satanism.

And the socialist puppet masters don’t even try to hide it. Santa is literally an anagram of Satan. Satan goes down to the fiery pit, Santa goes down the chimney to the fireplace. They both wear red. I mean come on people, open your eyes!

And that star on the top of the tree? It’s a freaking aiming mechanism for the Illuminati’s space lasers. And Ho ho ho?: Clearly a celebration of hedonism! Santa goes around the world? Impossible! The earth is flat.

Wait, what? Okay, that was close. And exactly how disinformation campaigns work. They take someone with grievances (in my case the monetization of affection, the people being nice one day a year, fruitcake) and take them down a rabbit hole of nonsense. Next thing you know, there’s no tinfoil for the tofurkey because you used it all making your hat.

So I’ll just go back to trying to like Christmas. I’ll give thanks that my family is not relying on toy drives and foodbanks like it was just six short years ago. I’ll celebrate that people from all walks of life — if only at one time of year — try to help others less fortunate. I’ll say a prayer for the lonely and all the others who find this time of year difficult. I’ll welcome the good wishes of strangers.

So whatever it means or doesn’t mean to you, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas.