I hate the holiday season. Wait, where did my ironic quote marks go? Okay, found ’em: I hate the “holiday season.” Back in the olden days of the early 1970s, the holiday season was a catchall phrase denoting Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day – in other words, an actual season of holidays. Now “holiday season” denotes a special time of year when gluten-free-vegan-salami-wielding Wiccans try to bag their limit of joyful souls who dare utter “Merry Christmas.” Which is usually quite difficult as those tofu meat sticks are much spongier than the real thing.
Yes, I know, Christmas and all it represents have been under attack since the whole “Priceline lost your reservations” imbroglio at the inn, but the insistence on stripping Christ from Christmas has been gaining serious, non-jocular momentum the past few years. For example, back in my day (that’s right, I said it), the second graders at our neighborhood public school would put on a Christmas play that was not only called “the Christmas play” but was often, heavens to murgatroyd, about Christmas. In my case, the production was a moving operetta entitled “Merry Christmas, Mr. Snowman.” (Full disclosure: I was Mr. Snowman. And if you must know, I went all Method and wandered, Brando-like, about the house in the chicken-wire-and-papier-mâché snowman costume my mom had constructed. And, like Brando, I became wedged between a bed and a dresser due to a girth-related miscalculation.) But in today’s era of secular killjoys, Christmas break is now “winter furlough,” and a play like “Mr. Snowman” would be rejiggered into “Happy Solstice, Humpy the Trans-specied Whale!”
Of course the most egregious examples of Christmasphobia come from the fraternal triplets of media, retail and advertising. And their egregiosity knows no bounds. Assorted network and cable television channels will trot out shows informing us that Christ was actually born, not in a manger, but in the back of time-traveling ’72 El Camino. We’ll be incessantly reminded that Christmas isn’t the only holiday on the schedule and that while Christmas may be over-commercialized, we better spend, spend, spend if we don’t want Black Friday sales to turn into Black Monday stock market losses.
In the Bobbsey Twin world of retail and advertising, stores trumpet their sales 24/7, yet the majority refuse to acknowledge the reason for their pleadin’. Instead we get holiday trees. And holiday decorations. Holiday shopping. Holiday get-togethers. Holiday sales. Come one! Come all! It’s the Generic Holiday Season! Buy our stuff! Frankly it’s a bit rude. After all, if you don’t mind making 40% of your profits during one six-week period; if you don’t mind advertising sale upon sale and having extended hours during the month of December; if you have no problem decking the aisles with red and white candy canes while accepting consumers’ green at the register; if, in other words, you have no problem making money off of Christmas, then come out and say CHRISTMAS.
The argument, a holiday cliché itself at this point, is that retails don’t want to offend anyone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Ignoring the fact that most ordinary folks aren’t offended by the mere existence of something in which they don’t participate. I wouldn’t get offended if a store had a Ramadan sale. As long as they had deep discounts on flat-screen TVs.
But what if someone does choose to be offended at the Yuletide ebullience? Well, pardon my lack of Christian charity, but so what? If a store owner really wanted to be all things to all people they should’ve gone into politics. And maybe, just maybe, that .000045% of sales a store loses will be up for by shoppers who are happy to have their holiday recognized and respected instead of just ripped off for commercial purposes. Because Christians – you know, the bulk of American consumers – shop a lot more places than Hobby Lobby and Mardel.
Yet I still have hope that all is not lost on this front. Aside from the fact that Jesus is Lord of all and will take care of these miscreants in due time, of course. And that is the annual airing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” For 45 years now, first on CBS and now ABC, Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” gang has spread the Christmas message without falling prey to encroaching political correctness. Can you imagine a scene (Hallmark Hall of Fame specials excluded) in a modern TV special wherein a main character literally recites Luke Chapter 2 and then tells everyone “that’s what Christmas is all about” as Linus does? Surely, Shirley, you jest.
So as for me and my house, we’ll celebrate the arrival of the round-headed kid with a wisp hair. And also, the Lord.
Merry C-Word!
