The Reason for the Season
Complaining about the politically correct versions of Merry Christmas is becoming more of a Christmas tradition than putting up lights or chopping down trees. This year it’s worse than ever.
In the last few weeks, I’ve read petitions urging government to abandon Season’s Greetings. I’ve seen people call for boycotts to punish retailers that say Happy Holidays. I’ve read countless complaints on blogs, watched celebrities like Jim Carrey mock the PC terms, and even heard it straight from the mouths of Christians.
The Reason for the Season is under attack. The meaning of Christmas has been stolen from the West.
But what is the meaning of Christmas?
Judging by what people do every Christmas – talk is cheap, after all – the meaning of Christmas is gluttony, alcoholism and hyper-consumerism. Roll that all together and you’ve got Consumption with a capital C. It’s appropriate that the most recognizable symbol of Christmas is a chopped-down tree.
With his simple message of love and moderation and his command that his followers give up all they have to follow him, it’s hard to imagine that this orgy of earthly riches is what Jesus Christ intended.
Perhaps the assault on Christmas isn’t led by politically-correct liberals but by mega-corporations intent on another big December. Maybe it’s not the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus and those pesky PC liberals who are stealing the meaning of Christmas. Maybe it’s us.
And yet, in spite of the profit- and consumption-driven subversion of Christmas, it remains a special season of generosity and closeness with family and friends. Spending time with the people I love is my favourite part of Christmas. But generosity and closeness with family are not particular to Christianity, they’re values shared among religions and cultures everywhere.
Attempting to make the Christmas season more inclusive is admirable, but replacing Merry Christmas with Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays is not the way to do it. Instead, people from other cultures will become naturally included as they see that instead of being about Jesus, Christmas is really all about generosity, friends and family on the one hand – or about getting fat and drunk and buying lots of stuff on the other.
Just like Happy Easter is free of controversy because most associate it with chocolate bunnies instead of resurrecting deities, Merry Christmas is en route to all the religious symbolism of the word holiday: holy day.
Merry Consumption, everybody. Let’s get wasted.
December 20th, 2005 at 10:48 am
You’ve got one of those chopped-down trees, mate. Bloody consumer.
December 20th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Our collective social thinking sometimes moves too slowly for most people to notice. That’s why the secularization of Christmas is hard to understand. It’s happened in the long durée. Slowly, Christmas has adapted new aspects, many of which have nothing to do with a religious holiday. Coca-cola commissioned the most ubiquitous image of Santa Claus – as a fat, bearded man in a red suit. The Santa myth now supercedes the nativity myth in many homes.
For some, Christmas is still a time of religious introspection. I don’t know many of these people, but I hear that they go to church. I celebrate a secular Christmas – call it a contradiction if you like – I don’t really give a shit what anyone calls it. I try and reaffirm my bond with friends and family during this time of year. I think about them a little more. I shower some of them with gifts, others just get a phone call. I have no desire to send cards. Truth be told, the christmas card seems to me to be the most hollow of this season’s sentiments. It says: “I was thinking of you, and fourty other people I know, so I bought you all the same card – one with a bland message I was too uninspired to concoct myself – and I sent them to you all, signed by myself, my partner, and our cat. It was easier than calling you, because I really wouldn’t know what to say to you anyways.” Thanks.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely cynical when it comes to Christmas. I like giving gifts. I like being on holiday. I like winter cooking. It can be a calm and comforting couple of days. But it comes with a cost. That cost is often expressed in dollars and stress. People go a little wonky at Christmas, probably because the whole affair has become too complicated. The tree, the lights, the gifts, the cards, the dinners, the decorations, the stockings, the candy, the songs, the television shows, the cocktail parties, the wreaths, the snacks for Santa. Somewhere along the line, Christmas became about so many things that the core messages were diluted beyond recognition. It became a commercial cash-cow, and we all missed it. Now, many people accept, if not expect, all of the afformentioned yuletide accoutrements. Christmas has genuinely become too complicated for anyone to celebrate in earnest. Instead, it is a three-day-long Western tragi-comedy, well-represented by the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes. Think Clarke Griswold.
If you’re cycnical this Christmas then smile, because you are experiencing the most genuine holiday emotion there is left.
December 20th, 2005 at 11:45 am
Yeah, but I didn’t cut it down. The damage was already done. ;)
Actually, the tree was not my idea, although I bear full responsibility for buying it and partial responsibility for sweeping up all the needles.
But you can’t claim I’m being hypocritical – I pointed out the consumption but I never said I wasn’t part of it – in fact I said the opposite.
December 20th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Bad Santas – too funny.
December 22nd, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Bravo, Ade!
BTW, here’s an absolutely hilarious take on the issue (warning: link not for the easily offended).
Here’s a sample:
Joyous Happy Merrydays, Everybody!
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:44 am
“Modern American Christmas makes Michael Jackson look positively organic.”
Man, a couple good laughs in that one. But yes, not even for those who are reasonably offended, let alone easily offended.