Merry Lies and Plastic Smiles

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  • Emiliano Girina's avatar Artist
    Emiliano G...
  • Prompt
    Read prompt
  • DDG Model
    Z-Image Turbo
  • Access
    Public
  • Created
    4h ago
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More about Merry Lies and Plastic Smiles

Smile, It’s Mandatory

Christmas arrives every year like a court summons wrapped in tinsel. You are required to appear, to perform joy, to demonstrate warmth on command. Smile. It’s mandatory. The calendar says so. The ads say so. The people who forgot you existed for the previous 364 days suddenly remember your name, usually while copy-pasting it into a group message.

This is the season of choreographed affection. Estranged relatives, emotionally absent friends, colleagues who wouldn’t cross the street for you in November now stage a brief theatrical revival of intimacy. They call it “the spirit of Christmas,” as if human decency were a limited-edition product released once a year and immediately discontinued on December 26th. For one day, indifference puts on a sweater and pretends it has always cared.

The hypocrisy is not subtle. It is wrapped in shiny paper and aggressively cheerful fonts. “Thinking of you,” says the card, written by someone who demonstrably was not thinking of you last week, last month, or last year. The message is less a sentiment than a ritual gesture, a social checkbox ticked to avoid guilt. Caring has become performative, a seasonal costume worn just long enough to be photographed.

Then comes the consumption, the real sacrament of this holiday. Christmas is no longer about connection; it is about transactions disguised as love. Affection is measured in receipts. The price tag becomes the emotional proxy: how much you spent replaces how well you know someone. The economy demands sacrifice, and the altar is your credit card. Buy more. Wrap more. Smile wider. Debt is temporary, but the illusion must be flawless.

Refusal is not permitted. If you opt out, you are labeled bitter, broken, ungrateful. You are told that you are “missing the magic,” when the real offense is seeing too clearly. Christmas does not tolerate honesty. It requires compliance. You must laugh at jokes that aren’t funny, eat meals heavy with unresolved tension, and pretend that proximity equals closeness. Smile. It’s mandatory.

What makes this spectacle especially cruel is not that people are flawed, but that they outsource empathy to a date on the calendar. As if kindness were exhausting, unsustainable, something that must be rationed annually. As if remembering someone, really remembering them, were too much effort to maintain year-round. One day of forced warmth is offered as compensation for a year of silence.

After the lights come down and the trash bags fill with torn wrapping paper, everyone quietly returns to their default settings. The messages stop. The concern evaporates. The smiles are stored away with the ornaments, to be retrieved next year for another round of compulsory cheer. The machine resets, satisfied.

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