While most of the people gather together every year to spend time with their family on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The intent is not always the same. Holidays should have a positive intent; to spend quality time together with the people they care about the most. This does not necessarily have to be family, it is sometimes a mixture of both family and friends and it usually accompanied by food. Family and friends spend time talking, reminiscing, making plans, cooking, playing games, eating, playing music, and other activities that bring togetherness.
However, there are other people who partake in the laziest pastime and America’s greatest divide, watching sports on the television, mainly football and basketball. This is the time of year when people drive out of their way to spend quality time with family and friends they enjoy the most, just to be alienated by a handful of the same people they came to see sitting in front of a blaring television to watch football or basketball. The sports industry and the commercial industry has poured millions of dollars into this great divide by sucking people into this lazy pastime during these two family occasions by over exaggerating and extending the timeframe of the sport to an all day time-suck. Sports channels drill the events into these people’s heads with the promise of entertaining them with an amazing game and providing captivating commercials of consumerist crap that these fans will think they need. While all the football fans plop their asses on the couch hooting and hollering at the game, they ignore, alienate, divide the room, and subject others to the ridiculous background noise of football or basketball blaring in the background. These are the same people that refer to football and basketball teams as “their team”. They talk about the players like they are all buddies, reminisce about their glory days playing high school football. However, they are too lazy to actually get out and play the game for fun because that would require actually moving their lazy ass and interacting with everyone. While the other half of family and friends are in the kitchen cooking for the whole group, working together to prepare a great meal for everyone, the football and basketball fans cannot be bothered with helping. They might even “shush” the people in the kitchen because it interferes with their intense concentration on watching grown men in tights and padding or shorts and a tank chase after each other with a ball. However, the football and basketball fans still partake in the eating process of the event leaving the cleanup duty to all the non-sports fans in the room, the same people that cooked the food, because the sports fans cannot be bothered. Then, wouldn’t you know it, after the preparation, eating, and clean up is over, the game is conveniently over too. Hence, America’s Great Divide and Laziest Pastime.
I have not been subjected to this ridiculous tradition for a long time and I do not miss it. However, I was reminded by this ridiculous “tradition” as some call it, when I went to the gym and noticed that the only thing playing on the television was football. If I am going to be subjected to watch sports at the gym, at least put different sports on each television while I’m riding the bike, using the elliptical machine, treadmill or many other physical contraptions and not the same game from different stations. I want to see blood, show me some hockey or full contact fighting. After all, we all pay a membership fee and not all of us like to watch sports.
Try something new, turn the television off and the music on, dance with your friends, cook for the people that cook for you every year, go outside and play the games with your friends and family before gorging yourselves with more than your body should consume on one sitting. Get active, get fit, and get healthy!
