Saturday, December 23, 2006
Dr. Happy Holidays: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore the "War Against Christmas."
There's nothing like an imaginary friend to get you through the trials and tribulations of childhood. At the age of five, I had an imaginary friend named Jason. Oddly enough, he didn't really do anything interesting. You'd think with the power to imbue a character with any traits I wanted, I might have given him capability to fly. I could have at least carved him in the image of the Fonz-- complete with leather jacket and surefire capacity to fire up jukeboxes at restaurants nationwide. My imaginary friend lasted for about a month, I believe. I'm not even sure why I had one in the first place. I suppose he would have been better located in the psychosomatic-inducing unpopular days of junior high. Had he been born in 1990, Jason may have lived a long and fruitful existence.
The moral of the story is: if you're going to make something up, it needs to have a purpose. Making something up for the sake of making it up is either delusional or it's art. Maybe both.
So what do I make of the "War Against Christmas?" You may be asking yourself, a) "what is the War Against Christmas?", b) "what does this have to do with imaginary friends?" or c) "what can I drink that goes well with reading this article?" I'll happily answer your first two questions.
First, the "War Against Christmas" is the belief that non-secular forces have hijacked the Christmas season and made it inappropriate to even reference Christmas during breakfast. Second, I've found in my personal experience that the "War Against Christmas" is as unimagined as the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or K-Fed's singing career.
In my youth, there was a family of Jehovah's Witnesses that down the street. Their house was notoriously unlit and unapproachable every Halloween. The overly noted irony of Jehovah's Witnesses turning away people at their door aside, the general reaction amongst myself and my childish bretheren was "yawn, next house, please." Had my parents worked for a conservative news channel, they may have made an incident out of this. I can imagine what the speech might have sounded like:
"This neighborhood was founded on the values of giving out candy to our kids. It is a simple fact that 98% of the houses on this street celebrate this ritual. Not saying "Happy Halloween" to not offend our neighbours is an outright blasphemy. In fact, I suggest that you boycott everywhere these people shop. Can you imagine giving out candy from the same grocery store which these admittedly well-groomed Halloween-less heathens shop? It's an insult to our local witches, pagans and otherwise prudish sorority girls who inexplicably dress like porn stars on October 31st!"
The easier thing to do would be to accept the neighbour's freedom to clench their candy like Scrooges, politely acknowledge them in public and snicker at them behind their back. That would have been the Canadian way. However, this alleged "War on Christmas" is just that: a war, dammit!! You don't say "hello" to your heathen enemy when there are battle trenches to be dug, blockades to establish and all-around hostile attitudes to convey.
One conservative critic weighed in on the subject last year with the heartwarming text, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." I immediately thought "I don't know what 'worse than I thought' means since I had no idea any such plan existed." Evidently the statistics that suggest that over 95% of people celebrate Christmas were down from what the author was expecting. Evidently a handful of alleged instances where schools and workplaces don't put up a Christmas wreath are enough to convince a group of people that the world is against Christmas and that we'd better nip this resistance in the bud before the 95% becomes 90% and so on. Hell, if that keeps up, we'll be out of Christmas by the year 2065!
Apparently, the REAL evidence that such a war exists is the use of such panaceaic terms as "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings." Such ideas, you see, don't give Jesus his due. The irony is that frontline soldiers in the "War on Christmas" declare their freedom by boycotting stores that don't include the word "Christmas" in their advertising. Many of these same people once protested going overboard with shopping for Christmas in the first place since "Jesus was the reason for the season." So it seems somewhat contradictory that they would suddenly turn to commerce to make their Christian point. Then again, the Ruskies were on our side in World War II, so what do I know?"
Trying to deny the "War on Christmas" is not necessarily that big of a deal for some of you as it may even be news that such a war exists. However, to these "soldiers," you might as well be denying the Holocaust. Of course, the Holocaust was documented with goverment papers, film, photos, graves and mass testimonials. The "War Against Christmas" is documented by a handful of parents who are miffed that they lost the chance to take a picture of their children doing a Christmas play their children probably would have given up for a rousing game of floor hockey. You can see how endless the parallels are.
Now, saying hello during the holiday seas...er, Christmas season has become a verbal landmine. If you tell someone "Merry Christmas," you run the risk of offending the people who certain people are telling you will be offended even though such people I have yet to see. However, they certainly must exist because the soldiers against the "War Against Christmas" tell me they exist. They wouldn't lie, would they? They're soldiers, for crying out loud!
If you tell someone "Happy Holidays," well then you're not supporting the troops, you're making baby Jesus cry and four puppies just died. Just like when you masturbate. You're also *gasp* including the other approximate 5% of the population in your greeting and that's like inviting the nerds to the high school prom. No one wants to do that, they take the worst pictures and overtake the grand march with their pythagorean marching formations.
When it comes to what I accept as a greeting: I have adopted a Swedenesque policy of neutrality in this great war. If someone gives me a "Happy Holidays," I'll take it. If someone gives me a "Merry Christmas," I'll take it. I'll also take "Happy Hannukah," "Happy Kwanzaa," "Solid Solstice," "Excellent Eid ul-Adha," or "Festivus for the rest of us." I am the Lando Calrissian of December: I'll take the best offer that's in front of me.
My neutral stance on being the "greetee" sometimes leads to a likely unjust sense of paranoia as the greeter. If I cheerfully wish a "Merry Christmas" to a frontliner, I may have inadvertently identified myself as a soldier to their cause. It's somewhat like knowing a few Beatles songs, then offhandedly saying you're a fan to someone who has a hanky that Paul McCartney used during the 1965 Shea Stadium concert encased in lucite.
Before you know it, you're being asked your opinion on "the Hamburg years" and which Beatle ex-wife was most responsible for the band's demise. It's all you can do to clench your teeth and say "listen, I really just like the bassline on 'Get Back.' Back off!!" I don't need to wish "Merry Christmas" to someone and then be patted on the back for "fighting the man" for ten minutes. "It's so wonderful that you say 'Merry Christmas,' that's how it should be blah blah blah..." On it goes until the person's voice becomes an adult from the Charlie Brown cartoons. If that's where this "war" is headed, I want no part of it.
It funnily makes me want to abandon giving any indication that there's ANY holiday going on. I think I stuck to "have a nice night" during my last shopping expedition. It went surprisingly smoothly. Of course, in ten years, some critic might take this greeting away from me too. The explanation will go something like this:
"The traditional understanding of "the night" has been hijacked for too long by those Liberal wackos espousing 'Take Back the Night' rallies. By saying 'have a nice night,' you are furthering the idea that the night is not already nice that these nutjobs are putting forth. Stand up for your rights as a non-secular and refuse to say 'have a nice night.' Only say 'goodbye!' You, my friend, won't just be giving a greeting, you'll be DOING something."
And that, I suppose, was the point all along. Saying "Merry Christmas" is no longer an effortless greeting. It is evidently a validation of your sense of self and your ability to struggle. Take pride in yourself as a Canadian/American/Westerner/ etc.: if you say "Merry Christmas," your effort will not be in vain. If I ever resurrect my imaginary friend, Jason, I'll carve him in the image of the ultimate movie villain. He'll be the guy who takes my cookies away from me when I'm not looking. That way, whenever anyone sees me eat a cookie, they'll applaud me for standing up for myself in the "War Against Jason."
After all, it's high time someone gave me a cookie for eating a cookie!
BMN
The moral of the story is: if you're going to make something up, it needs to have a purpose. Making something up for the sake of making it up is either delusional or it's art. Maybe both.
So what do I make of the "War Against Christmas?" You may be asking yourself, a) "what is the War Against Christmas?", b) "what does this have to do with imaginary friends?" or c) "what can I drink that goes well with reading this article?" I'll happily answer your first two questions.
First, the "War Against Christmas" is the belief that non-secular forces have hijacked the Christmas season and made it inappropriate to even reference Christmas during breakfast. Second, I've found in my personal experience that the "War Against Christmas" is as unimagined as the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or K-Fed's singing career.
In my youth, there was a family of Jehovah's Witnesses that down the street. Their house was notoriously unlit and unapproachable every Halloween. The overly noted irony of Jehovah's Witnesses turning away people at their door aside, the general reaction amongst myself and my childish bretheren was "yawn, next house, please." Had my parents worked for a conservative news channel, they may have made an incident out of this. I can imagine what the speech might have sounded like:
"This neighborhood was founded on the values of giving out candy to our kids. It is a simple fact that 98% of the houses on this street celebrate this ritual. Not saying "Happy Halloween" to not offend our neighbours is an outright blasphemy. In fact, I suggest that you boycott everywhere these people shop. Can you imagine giving out candy from the same grocery store which these admittedly well-groomed Halloween-less heathens shop? It's an insult to our local witches, pagans and otherwise prudish sorority girls who inexplicably dress like porn stars on October 31st!"
The easier thing to do would be to accept the neighbour's freedom to clench their candy like Scrooges, politely acknowledge them in public and snicker at them behind their back. That would have been the Canadian way. However, this alleged "War on Christmas" is just that: a war, dammit!! You don't say "hello" to your heathen enemy when there are battle trenches to be dug, blockades to establish and all-around hostile attitudes to convey.
One conservative critic weighed in on the subject last year with the heartwarming text, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." I immediately thought "I don't know what 'worse than I thought' means since I had no idea any such plan existed." Evidently the statistics that suggest that over 95% of people celebrate Christmas were down from what the author was expecting. Evidently a handful of alleged instances where schools and workplaces don't put up a Christmas wreath are enough to convince a group of people that the world is against Christmas and that we'd better nip this resistance in the bud before the 95% becomes 90% and so on. Hell, if that keeps up, we'll be out of Christmas by the year 2065!
Apparently, the REAL evidence that such a war exists is the use of such panaceaic terms as "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings." Such ideas, you see, don't give Jesus his due. The irony is that frontline soldiers in the "War on Christmas" declare their freedom by boycotting stores that don't include the word "Christmas" in their advertising. Many of these same people once protested going overboard with shopping for Christmas in the first place since "Jesus was the reason for the season." So it seems somewhat contradictory that they would suddenly turn to commerce to make their Christian point. Then again, the Ruskies were on our side in World War II, so what do I know?"
Trying to deny the "War on Christmas" is not necessarily that big of a deal for some of you as it may even be news that such a war exists. However, to these "soldiers," you might as well be denying the Holocaust. Of course, the Holocaust was documented with goverment papers, film, photos, graves and mass testimonials. The "War Against Christmas" is documented by a handful of parents who are miffed that they lost the chance to take a picture of their children doing a Christmas play their children probably would have given up for a rousing game of floor hockey. You can see how endless the parallels are.
Now, saying hello during the holiday seas...er, Christmas season has become a verbal landmine. If you tell someone "Merry Christmas," you run the risk of offending the people who certain people are telling you will be offended even though such people I have yet to see. However, they certainly must exist because the soldiers against the "War Against Christmas" tell me they exist. They wouldn't lie, would they? They're soldiers, for crying out loud!
If you tell someone "Happy Holidays," well then you're not supporting the troops, you're making baby Jesus cry and four puppies just died. Just like when you masturbate. You're also *gasp* including the other approximate 5% of the population in your greeting and that's like inviting the nerds to the high school prom. No one wants to do that, they take the worst pictures and overtake the grand march with their pythagorean marching formations.
When it comes to what I accept as a greeting: I have adopted a Swedenesque policy of neutrality in this great war. If someone gives me a "Happy Holidays," I'll take it. If someone gives me a "Merry Christmas," I'll take it. I'll also take "Happy Hannukah," "Happy Kwanzaa," "Solid Solstice," "Excellent Eid ul-Adha," or "Festivus for the rest of us." I am the Lando Calrissian of December: I'll take the best offer that's in front of me.
My neutral stance on being the "greetee" sometimes leads to a likely unjust sense of paranoia as the greeter. If I cheerfully wish a "Merry Christmas" to a frontliner, I may have inadvertently identified myself as a soldier to their cause. It's somewhat like knowing a few Beatles songs, then offhandedly saying you're a fan to someone who has a hanky that Paul McCartney used during the 1965 Shea Stadium concert encased in lucite.
Before you know it, you're being asked your opinion on "the Hamburg years" and which Beatle ex-wife was most responsible for the band's demise. It's all you can do to clench your teeth and say "listen, I really just like the bassline on 'Get Back.' Back off!!" I don't need to wish "Merry Christmas" to someone and then be patted on the back for "fighting the man" for ten minutes. "It's so wonderful that you say 'Merry Christmas,' that's how it should be blah blah blah..." On it goes until the person's voice becomes an adult from the Charlie Brown cartoons. If that's where this "war" is headed, I want no part of it.
It funnily makes me want to abandon giving any indication that there's ANY holiday going on. I think I stuck to "have a nice night" during my last shopping expedition. It went surprisingly smoothly. Of course, in ten years, some critic might take this greeting away from me too. The explanation will go something like this:
"The traditional understanding of "the night" has been hijacked for too long by those Liberal wackos espousing 'Take Back the Night' rallies. By saying 'have a nice night,' you are furthering the idea that the night is not already nice that these nutjobs are putting forth. Stand up for your rights as a non-secular and refuse to say 'have a nice night.' Only say 'goodbye!' You, my friend, won't just be giving a greeting, you'll be DOING something."
And that, I suppose, was the point all along. Saying "Merry Christmas" is no longer an effortless greeting. It is evidently a validation of your sense of self and your ability to struggle. Take pride in yourself as a Canadian/American/Westerner/ etc.: if you say "Merry Christmas," your effort will not be in vain. If I ever resurrect my imaginary friend, Jason, I'll carve him in the image of the ultimate movie villain. He'll be the guy who takes my cookies away from me when I'm not looking. That way, whenever anyone sees me eat a cookie, they'll applaud me for standing up for myself in the "War Against Jason."
After all, it's high time someone gave me a cookie for eating a cookie!
BMN
# posted by BMN @ 4:49 AM 
