The Most Terrible Time of the Year

Dec 23, 2019

"It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet."
–Margaret Mead

Stage Zero: Celebrate

‘Tis the season to be a hypocrite. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, or nothing at all, December is a time to be thankful, to be giving, and to reflect on the past year. It’s the time of year to put others first and be selfless. As a child, I never understood that and just loved getting presents, but now they seem pointless. They are meaningless, just an excuse to buy random things we don’t need. Like Valentine’s Day, Christmas is now nothing more than a holiday driven by our consumerism. But the cherry on top is that we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus with massive feasts of flesh and strange concoctions of animal secretions. There is no god in this world that would appreciate the way we celebrate, ritualizing the abuse and ingestion of tortured souls. That sounds more like Satan’s territory if you ask me.

In this time of year, I can’t even turn on the television without hearing the sorrowful notes of "Silent Night" or "In the Bleak Midwinter" playing over the distressing images of dogs chained out in the cold. These ASPCA commercials used to make me feel too sad to watch. Now they make me angry. Let me be clear: I firmly believe that leaving your “pets” outside, whether it’s summer or winter, is animal cruelty. If you want an animal, just like a child, there are standards of living to which you must be held accountable. However, everyone claims these commercials are among the saddest of all time because of the animal cruelty. Yet, these same people are practically inhaling the corpses of other animals every day, especially around this time of year. Aren’t we supposed to be thinking of others, caring for them now? But because of tradition, people are even more opposed to compassionate eating during the holiday season. It’s disgusting and disrespectful to the animals as well as the god they worship.

Every year since I became vegan, going to church on Christmas Eve has gotten more and more torturous. In the past, even though I was unsure of my belief in this miracle birth and the religion in general, I’ve always loved Christmas services. The music, the candlelight, the atmosphere. Last year was my breaking point; I felt like I was trapped inside a horror movie, stuck in my seat as I was bombarded with terrifying thoughts and images. The whole time, I was fuming, wanting at the same time to scream out at all these ignorant people who undoubtedly would be enjoying a monstrous turkey or pig corpse the following day and wanting to bolt out of there. But I did neither, and I remained until the end, my wonderful Christmas Eve utterly shattered by a group of people who were just enjoying the pleasant service and had no idea of the war occurring in my mind. When I got home, I chronicled all my thoughts I had in that hour as a way of venting my frustrations, laid out more coherently in the following paragraphs.

Stage One: Entrance

As soon as I walked into the sanctuary, I felt out of place, and I knew it would be a very difficult hour for me. Then, waltzing past me comes a woman with a child, about two or three years old, wearing a monstrous fur coat. In Florida. When it’s 60 degrees outside. You don’t wear a coat like that in that kind of weather because you need it. You wear it to make a statement. Just a few rows ahead was a woman in a fur hat. And there were even some feathered caps around. Men dressed in their nice wool suits, silk ties, and leather dress shoes. In every pew were leather-bound bibles. Every place I looked, there was another dead animal. These beautiful souls taken for our world of vanity.

Stage Two: All His Children

Our savior, our redeemer Jesus Christ, born so humble with the lowly animals. Religion is brimming with sinful levels of anthropocentrism because it’s not actually about God or Jesus or any other deity: it’s about us. It was created to make us feel good about our disgraceful lives. Because no matter what we do, what sins we commit, we are redeemed with God’s love. But what about God’s other children, the nonhuman animals? Does he exist only to serve and redeem us? This sort of speciesism is rampant in Christianity. As if children are somehow more influenced by the place in which they were born. So what if Jesus was born in a barn? The animals and the humans all congregated to see the son of God, but the humans have twisted the tale to make Jesus look better. Because he wasn’t already saintly enough?

Stage Three: Safety

As I sat in the “sanctuary,” I thought about the irony of this term. A safe place, a haven for all. But within these people, rotting inside them, was the flesh of many more than just Jesus. They have peace, love, and joy in their hearts, but that is a fallacy created by our own kind to justify our atrocious lives. As we began to sing the first song of the night, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” I fought to hold back tears. Thoughts of all the suffering caused by these faithful people were tearing me apart inside. And the only thing I could do was call out to whatever may be listening and beg, God, give me the strength to just get through this service. That was my mantra through the night, my prayer that I would be able to survive this. It almost seems foolish now compared to the suffering of the animals, but it was like I was experiencing pain on their behalf. In my mind, I was being attacked from each prayer, peaceful tune, and smile shared by these abusers. I had to force myself to think that they’re truly good people who simply don’t know any better. But there comes a time when excuses cannot justify wrongdoings.

Stage Four: Escape

This was one of the worst Christmas Eves I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to turn this into a hopeful post, but I can’t. Religion is nothing but an out we’ve created to forgive ourselves of our misdeeds so we can continue living sinful lives. That’s not to say there isn’t necessarily a greater force at play, but religion as we know it is nothing but a bastardization of the kind of faith and love God would want. Like the quote above, diet is ingrained in us stronger than any religion. And in my experience, some of the most devout people are the most speciesist and destructive.

To whatever deities may be out in the ether and to every animal killed by the bloodthirsty hands of mankind:
I’m fighting for change. Please forgive us.