Tired of all the yawping about taking Christ out of Xmas? Tired of people--and you know who they are--who make a living out of pretending that there's a war on Xmas?
Yeah.
Me too.
Actually, there is no WAR ON CHRISTMAS. The Christmas holiday season starts earlier and earlier each year, lapping over other traditional American holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving. And this country is absolutely drenched in everything Christmas starting right after the 4th of July.
The complainers who claim there's a war on Xmas aren't really whining about not having enough Christmas, they're really complaining about people not being more religious about Christmas. But the ones responsible for that are not the non-religious--(actually, the Christians stole the idea of celebrating the winter solstice and making it into the birthday for Jesus from pagans.)
No. The people most responsible for making Christmas into the biggest capitalist celebration of the calendar year are, well, they're the good ole all American apple pie, Mom, and flag waving corporations. They're the ones who start the selling of stuff right after Labor Day and they keep it going right through the Baby Jesus's non-birthday. (According to Biblical scholars, Jesus was born in the spring.)
So all of this forced commercialism on what was originally a pagan celebration around the Winter Solstice is, to me, a WART on Xmas, not a WAR on Xmas.
A wart is an unpleasant growth on something. Usually a hand or foot or other part of a human's or other animal's body [See Warthog.] So we usually associate it with something unattractive.
I now associate the Christmas season with a lot of unattractive, annoying corporate, not family, traditions. When I was a kid, the Xmas season wasn't like that. We actually made it through Thanksgiving without hearing a Xmas song or seeing a Xmas decoration in the neighborhood until at least the second week in December. We didn't put our pagan-inspired tree up until the week before Xmas. And we didn't feel like choking the person responsible for playing Christmas music because he/she imposed it on us in November. The Christmas songs were fun for the two weeks we endured them. But because Xmas is the biggest selling season for corporations, we're exploited and hounded to get into the Xmas spirit so we'll feel all fuzzy and warm inside while spending a lot of money on a lot of cheap Chinese-made stuff.
I prefer the Xmas of my youth when we exchanged one present each, when we put food or sweets in our stockings, and we celebrated the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, while our aunts and uncles played our favorite Xmas songs on the piano, violin, and guitar.
Here's my list of what has become the WARTS ON XMAS:
1) Black Friday
2) Being forced to listen to "What a bright time, it's the right time to rock the night away," starting on November 1 in my local CVS. And other Xmas ditties over and over and over and over in every store I walk into.
3) The teevee adverts on children's toys. Children's ugly made-in-China plastic toys.
4) Salvation Army ringers. I heard them in October outside of my local Whole Foods.
5) Gigantic plastic blow-up reindeer, Santas, snowmen, and creches on sad little lawns in suburbia.
6) Colored lights -- not the kind that Stanley Kowalski told Stella about in "A Street Car Named Desire," the colored, flashing lights that are festooned on houses so that they look like nightmarish casinos.
7) Fake Christmas trees (unless you have allergies.) Why not enjoy the smell of pine in your home--one of the nicest things about the season.
8) Fake snow
9) Teevee specials with awful music and singing.
11) Commercially baked Xmas cookies from the supermarkets
12) Christmas "letters" included in cards bragging about all your families' achievements.
14) Shopping malls.
15) Office parties.
16) "I want, I want, I want!"
17) FAUX NOOZ telling their viewers that saying "Happy Holidays," is leaving Christ out of Xmas.
17) FAUX NOOZ, Bill O'Reilly, and their viewers telling me there's a "War on Christmas."
18) There isn't.
Feel free to add more.
There's no war on Christmas, there are only WARTS on Christmas, and that's because the corporatists need to make as much money as possible in this limited period of time. That means we have to endure annoying inducements to buy, buy, buy.
I was raised a Catholic. I am no longer a believer, but I do enjoy the pagan tradition of putting up a tree and celebrating the winter solstice.
Jesus was not born in the winter. Shepherds did not keep watch over their flocks by night in the fields in winter. But no one seems to mind that part of the story's contradiction.
Why people who believe in the Christmas story participate in making it into a wart on the season is a mystery to me.
Happy Holidays and Festivus for the rest of us!
Agreed, there is no war on Christmas. So why are you writing that there is? Just because some idiot said there is? The idiot wins if you bring attention to a non-issue.
ReplyDeleteI disagree, Anon. There are so many people repeating this mindless drivel that someone has to point out that the sky is NOT falling and no one is actually trying to do away with Christmas. I usually use the term Happy Holidays when speaking to someone I don't know too well out of respect for their particular celebration. Perhaps they celebrate Channukah or Kwanza or even Julianuary (love those lemmings). And maybe they celebrate Christmas. I include them all equally. Like Shaw I remember "real" Christmases when we went to midnight mass and the holidays were family time. When going through our stockings was as much fun as opening our 1 or 2 presents. I too am tired of awful holiday jingles assaulting us from October to January and retailers bombarding us with black Friday, FU Thursday and hey don't forget Cyber Monday and all the rest of the days they can think to try and create a shopping frenzy. I get it, they are retailers, they need to make money but at what cost? Taking all the fun out of the holiday season while creating an atmosphere of want and greed? Bah humbug! I say.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous! If you read my post carefully, you would have seen that I said "there is no war on Christmas." I said there is a WART on Christmas -- something unattractive and annoying.
ReplyDeleteAnd rockync, I remember those Xmases too. And I remember--at least in our family--the emphasis was on the food for Xmas Eve. That was the central part of our celebration. Food. Lots of it. Christmas day was actually a come down after the fun of eating all that seafood, opening our gifts after midnight Mass, And yes, we had one, at the most two, gifts to open. That was it.
Sorry, I still think you had a slow news day and nothing else to write about. O'Reily, who keeps bringing this up, is the laughing stock of media except FOX. It's been totally discredited and I have to wonder about your motives. You enjoy highlighting idiots and that's fair, but attacking a non-issue reflects on your intelligence also.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
DeleteOn Christmas day, I hope you wake up with a Reindeer head in your bed.
Although Lyin' Bill indeed belongs in the pillory, (I prefer the ones where you piss on the victim rather than just to laugh) he's hardly discredited nor is Fox. They still prosper and they're still the prime recruiter for the Tea Traitors, religious delusionals, Secessionists, Bigots and Republicans.
DeleteSpeaking of delusion, when a birthday celebration of a mostly mythologized Galilean whose birthday is completely unknown includes CocaCola drinking fat men drawn around the sky by flying Pleistocene magafauna with luminescent noses maybe it's time to get "Christ" the hell out of Christmas. It's all based on other people's mythology and has nothing to do with him or any actual mission he might have had.
Frankly since his one and only mission was to get out from under the Roman boot heel and return the Jews to self rule, can't we consider it complete and just shut down the operation, sell off the assets and retire?
There is no shortage of commenters who come to blogs voluntarily to tell us what we should or shouldn't be writing about.
ReplyDeleteAnon, I got your message. I wonder about YOUR motives.
And now would be a good time to direct attention to our comment policy. While we will allow you to hang out here without a name or tag, we do not allow disrespect and baiting.
DeleteThe only reason the Far right delusionals are selling the myth that the myths of Christmas are under attack is to hide the war on St. Swithyns day. Hey when's the last time you heard anyone say merry Swythmas?
ReplyDeleteBut seriously there's no better way to stir up enthusiasm for a war than to say someone is challenging your religion and isn't war good for business? Funny though that people who make such a fuss about being unabashed and unrestrained capitalists pretend to be angry at the largest capitalist celebration of the year next to the superbowl. But of course they're not really Capitalists, they're Feudalists that long for a world of poverty where you can buy and sell people and live like a Duke if your last name is Inc.
Face it Fox Fans, Christianity ( and Islam) see Capitalism as anathema. Neither wants you to charge interest on a loan, which is necessary to capitalism. Jesus insists on a minimum wage and that providing health care for everyone is a duty. In fact he was an unabashed Communist preaching against private property and for spreading the wealth around, so if you nattering nitwits want to make this a Christian state, you're going to have to accept things you would rather die than accept or ride out of town on the talking donkey you rode in on. You can't have it both ways.