OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

Accumulation of the Useless

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Think big, shop local

by Heather Leighton
30.12.2011

Occupy Christmas: International Day of Action has been a welcome initiative for many of us. The holiday season is a hectic, stressful time for working families who end up spending well beyond their means on gifts, meals and entertainment. This spending spree now extends beyond the holiday season and into the New Year, as lining up outside big box stores for big ticket items has become a popular new tradition in the past decade. The real winners in all this are the corporations, credit card companies and banks. Otherwise known as 1%.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

We Wish You An Oblivious Christmas

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You know the joke about Interrupting Cow. Here comes Interrupting Christmas.

by Michael Mirolla
29.12.2011

Don’t get me wrong. I like Christmas (or whatever the latest politically correct designation might be). I just don’t appreciate the fact it gets in the way. Difficult to put in 16-hour days with people waving bottles of fine wine, single malt, and five-star cognac under your nose. Even more difficult to keep up the jollity when you’re slipping further and further into the quagmire known as “the deadline” or “the pit of postmodern time.”

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

Protestant? Sure

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Occupying the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal

by Eric Hamovitch
28.12.2011

All of my immediate family members were born in Montreal, but because we were raised as Jews, our observance of Christmas consisted largely of getting into the family car on a fine evening in late December and driving around certain neighbourhoods to admire the extravagant displays of ornamental lighting that some householders had taken the trouble to put on show. This was not the whole story of Christmas, of course, and school filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

Tout le monde en fête

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You say Christmas, I say Milad Majid

by Joseph Elfassi
27.12.2011

A Québec employer summons two employees from different cultural backgrounds, and apologises for a Christmas card that was sent around the Office — which he is sure has offended both of them.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

Little Brother, Remember the Christmas?

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Short story

by Mark Paterson
25.12.2011

Remember the Christmas when you got into Mom’s purse? They caught you in the closet, lipsticks and keys and coins and tissues on the floor, encircling you like a wreath. You were building a little pyramid of pills, your fingers chalky with pink dust.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

1% Shopping, 99% Love

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Because some things are more important than decorating the tree

by Catherine Averback
24.12.2011

Occupy Christmas. I could come up with a whole slew of definitions for how these two words fit together. For example, how we shouldn’t be so fixated on consumerism, how we’re digging ourselves even deeper holes with holiday debt, and so on. But, I choose to see this all a little differently.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

God Rest Ye Merry Fressers

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Some of my best friends celebrate Christmas!

by Gina Roitman
23.12.2011

Growing up Jewish in a world that celebrates Christmas in a myriad of ways – in song, in lights, in trees, and in gift-giving – can be torture. It generates a terrible yearning for things verboten like belting out three verses of Joy to the World or artfully draping tinsel on the tree you wrestled into a corner of the living room.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

The Wild Hunt

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Stalking the origins of Christmas

by Martyn Bryant
22.12.2011

In life we have to live with contradictions. F. Scott Fitzgerald said in The Crack Up that, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Christmas raises the most fundamental and visceral contradictions in me; it’s wonderfully loving and hedonistic but also nauseatingly cheap and shallow.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

It Came Upon a Midnight Sale

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Learning the lessons of poverty

by Sujata Dey
21.12.2011

So Kalle Lasn, co-founder of Adbusters and instigator of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has shifted his target to the holiday season, urging people to boycott Christmas materialism. Lasn wants people to stop gift buying, which supports environmentally hazardous overconsumption and the unethical actions of certain corporations.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

The Orphans

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Poem

by Ehab Lotayef
20.12.2011

Versace / Ralph Lauren / Lanvin

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BOOKS

Brrrrrrrr!

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The Joy of Spooking: Sinister Scenes, by P.J. Bracegirdle, McElderry Books

by Luca Brown
18.12.2011

It’s that time of year again. The time where we escape the falling snow, lock ourselves in warm houses, and curl up with a good book. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy some chilling horrors. P.J. Bracegirdle’s Sinister Scenes can put you in a terrified mood along with some mystery and a bit of humour no matter what the time of year.

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STAGE

That Fuzzy Feeling

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Reviewing Broadway’s beloved puppet show, Avenue Q

by James Gartler
17.12.2011

With the holiday season finally in full swing, many Montrealers are driving down to the Big Apple for a little slice of yuletide escapism.  If taking in a musical is at the top of your itinerary, Rover’s got you covered with this look at one of Broadway’s best…the beloved Avenue Q.

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MUSIC

Save a Prayer

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Sardonic Montreal gospel group Irreverend James and the Critical Mass Choir raise the roof… and the occasional hackle

by Rima Hammoudi
15.12.2011

When you think of a gospel choir, three things typically come to mind: a church, an inspiring group of singers with miraculous voices, and the word “hallelujah.” (Stop thinking about Leonard Cohen – focus!) The music world, and truly, the art world en masse, is evolving alongside an increasing secular shift, which makes it hard [...]

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MUSIC

A Mystery of History

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A tragic, and fascinating, Mexican elegy comes to life in the beautiful Latin music of David Ryshpan's Alicuanta

by Shayne Gryn
13.12.2011

Local jazz and world music aficionado David Ryshpan has teamed up vocalist Gitanjali Jain to produce a song cycle based on the poetry of Francisco Serrano. The work, entitled Alicuanta, is a collection of haunting and evocative songs that, in the words of Serrano, address such primal dualities as “love and lost love, pain and [...]

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STAGE

Slicing and Dicey

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Dave St. Pierre, Le cycle de la boucherie, at Théâtre La Chapelle, through December 17

by Marianne Ackerman
13.12.2011

If Vincent Van Gogh were alive and creating dance theatre in Montreal, he might well make work like Dave St. Pierre’s. Both artists display sure flashes of genius embedded in frantic energy, and a voracious will focused unflinchingly on the creation of terrible beauty.

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