 Well, the holiday season is upon us once again. A time for getting together with family, sharing gifts and reminiscing on the year that has passed. Everyone seems a lot more cheery this time of the year, which isn't a bad thing. We definitely need more of that in life. But there's been some things I've noticed that I have found deeply troubling. The supermarkets and shopping malls absolutely filled with consumers urgently buying products. Products which have a cost. All products have a far-reaching impact on the environment and the ecosystem. But none have such a direct impact on sentient beings the way meat, dairy, eggs and animal products do. Christmas is a time for giving, showing love and offering compassion. How could we claim to be in alignment with these beliefs? While simultaneously condemning an uncountable number of innocent beings to a slaughterhouse. A slaughterhouse is a place of pure hell for animals. These horrible kill floors are not really consistent with the spirit of Christmas. Billions of turkeys, chickens and ducks hung upside down to have their throat sliced. Pigs electrically prodded into gas chambers where they will thrash, burn, and suffer in a dark dungeon filled with CO2. Lambs, innocent baby lambs, stabbed in the neck to be drained of their blood. Sentient, sensitive, intelligent sea life, ripped out of the ocean, slowly suffocated and gutted. And cows, calves and other cattle, sexually abused, exploited, separated from their families, condemned to a bolt gun in the head and mercilessly butchered into pieces. The bloodstained corpses of animals who didn't want to die are decorated and placed as a pretty centerpiece on the tables of unconscious, disconnected human beings, good human beings. Human beings who have been conditioned by a violent culture. A society that can look at a roasted piece of flesh and see only food and not the chopped up body of an individual. Are we so hypnotized, so cleverly and heavily indoctrinated that we cannot see what is right in front of our faces? This Christmas season let's make a pledge to be more conscious of the beings we share this earth with. Let's wake up from this hypnosis perpetuated by advertising an industry. Let's embrace the positive, sharing good natured vibes of the holiday season and extend the compassion we have for friends and family to all of the creatures on earth. Leave animals off your plate this Christmas. Be vegan. Peace.