Patrick Jay Sullivan's Blog

There is something about Christmas that is very inconsistent. It is supposed to be a time when Christians celebrate the birth of their savior. It is a time when people renew friendships and families come together to share meals and spend time with each other. "Peace on earth, goodwill towards men" seems to be a common thread. However, like most major holidays in our country, business has seized it and made it their own. I was watching an episode of Family Guy where they decide to do a reality show of the family and Meg quits. They replace her with an actress. Then the family gets sick of it all and they quit and are replaced by actors for the six-month of the contract for the show. The absurdity of it is humorous but it also reveals just how much control over life the networks and the media has.
Look at it another way. When Barak Obama was elected, they were all gushing about the hope and the prospect he was for the country. Immediately after he began working for the stimulus they began to pound the airwaves with the Republican view of no spending just cut taxes. They even pointed out that tax cuts eventually get passed on to states so that there is no real economic benefit because someone eventually has to pay for the services. Of course, that was swept under the rug when their homie, George Bush was in office. OK, enough politics. The point is that the media sets the expectations for everything. If they don't like your life, they create their own version of it. Actors in essence, replace you. Or at least, you are made to feel as though you life outside the margin of what is normal and actual. The truth is, Christmas can be whatever you make it. I remember my mother telling me the story of how when she was a young mother, my Great Grandmother had her daughters share the hosting of holidays (and she treated my mom as a daughter and loved her like one of her own). Anyway, one of my Great Aunts was a bit jealous of my mother so when it was her turn, she invited all but my mother and our family for Christmas. My mother found out when she called to ask what she should bring and was told "Nothing. But feel free to stop by for desert later on in the early evening." My mother told me she was hurt at first, but then got excited. She figured she could create her own Christmas for just us kids and our father. She could make her own traditions. Of course, that is what happened. My Great Grandmother learned of the situation too late to change it. From that day forward, my mom and dad made their own holidays with just us kids until years later when my grandmother and my great grandmother often came to be with us because it was just plain more fun and with all the kids, you never had to be on guard. The point is, we make our own Christmas. We have to just shut the TV off from November through January and create our own holiday season the way we want it to be. Ignore what others say and have fun with it. That is was it is all about. Celebrate life, family and friends and quit letting business tell us how much to spend, what to do, what to eat and how to think about it all.

Well, it’s official. CBS news reported today that reliable sources such as the AMA have released findings which prove that even being 10 to 15 pounds overweight can boost your probability of heart disease and heart failure as much as 40%. The more overweight you are the more likely you will be to have a heart attack or worse. I suppose I should have seen this coming. My doctor has wanted me to lose the 30 pounds that I packed on after I quit smoking nearly ten years ago. He has been after me for about seven years now. At first he said: “Don’t worry about the weight. The important thing is that you quit smoking. You can lose the weight once you are sure you have kicked the habit for good.” Of course, only a few years later he began to suggest that I lose ten to twenty pounds before the next physical. Then there was the year he got stern and raised his voice. He told me I was borderline obese. Now he says that the danger of me going back to smoking is very slim, if any, and that if I don’t lose that weight I will have a heart attack or more likely, a stroke. He told me all of the things that were on the TV today and more. But the thing is, I still struggle with the second helpings and the night eating and all of those annoying habits that I never had prior to ending my “smoking days.”
The surprising thing here is not that I am overweight given my circumstances. It isn’t that I have been watching too much TV and not getting out and walking like I used to do. It isn’t even that I have taken seven years and still haven’t lost more than ten pounds of the weight I had gained. No, the surprising thing here is that when my doctor told me, it didn’t have the same effect that it had watching a news anchor on the nightly news say those words.
When did I become one of those people who believe everything that is said on the television? When did I become one of those people for whom the TV is the profound source of knowledge? This disturbs me on several levels. In the days before I had cable TV I would read a lot. I read magazines such as Time and Newsweek and kept up on world news as well as local news. I read a lot of fiction and still managed to get out and walk and enjoy exercise. Now that I have cable TV I spend several hours a day parked in front of the tube and I don’t go out walking as much. Granted, here on the east coast there are no sidewalks as there are in the Midwest. They simply won’t spend money on that sort of thing. Nevertheless, I used to frequently opt for off the road into the woods hiking back when I was an avid walker. So that is no excuse.
But there is an even greater problem here. Part of what I see happening in my life is that even when I limit the amount of television that I watch, there are an excessive amount of advertisements for food, scenes in sit coms where people are eating, and lots of suggestions to get a snack and come back to watch more TV featuring food as one of the not so subtle stars in the lineup. I am sure they make a lot of money doing this. This Christmas, while everyone else is busy gaining the 5.6 pounds that the Americans gain during the holidays. I am going to shut off the TV and go out walking until I am so weary that I sink into a deep and restful sleep when I return home. I am going to bring a sketchbook with me and see if I can stop and draw a tree or a cool item I spot out on the walk. I am going to do my weight lifting at the gym and my cardio work on the street or in the woods. I don’t want to be a number among thousands in a statistic on the CBS evening news.