War on Christmas? About Damn Time.

                                                            War on Christmas? I'm in.
                                                               Christmas is Killing Us

   So earlier this week, the venerable John Stewart of The Daily Show called FOX News out on their latest crusade like 'story' 'The War on Christmas'.  There 'Cover Story' was of a Nativity Scene no longer being allowed to be displayed in a public park in California, as it was secular.  Therefore, Christmas is under assault. Stewart's main point was that FOX News has rolled out this dead horse so often over the past five years' Christmas seasons, that not only has it been beaten to an unnecessary red, white and gangrene pulp, but who the hell are they kidding?  Stewart goes on to point out how lengthy and in your face the entire season has become, so much so that even Thanksgiving is no longer safe from the rampant materialism Christmas instills, so that Americans are actually limiting their Thanksgiving plans, working around them to shop more.
     Despite that stores start putting up Christmas decorations the day after Halloween, that Santa Claus is emblazoned on everything from soda cans to fast food packaging for two months, or that Christmas music is shoved at us in every elevator, waiting room and department store for six weeks, we are supposed to imagine that Christmas is under threat?  When was the last time you couldn't get a shopping bag that wasn't covered in Kwanza colors?
    As Mr. Stewart said 'Christmas has become so big that it's eating other holidays!'
    During what has since become known as 'Black Friday Weekend' as opposed to 'Thanksgiving Weekend', there were numerous displays of the type of behavior that unabashed consumerism brings out in people.  Men and women trampling each other for twenty dollars off video games, threatening murder on each other to get to the marked down televisions, outright brawls over who was in line first.  Often times these incidents occurred in front of the children that many of these shoppers use an excuse to buy things during these smorgasbords of crass materialism.
     Which brings me to my main point about Christmas and this supposed 'War':  FOX News has the right idea.
     We need a war on Christmas.  Or at least, a revolution, because Christmas is fucking evil.  An insidious, methodical, horrifyingly real evil that would have any Death Metal fan quaking in fear if they realized the truth.  A truth that is all wrapped up in pretty packaging with a big bow to distract everyone.
      Before I go into greater depth, I feel it is important to state that at one point in my life I was one of the season's biggest supporters.  In fact, between the ages of 13 and 17 I would enter a host of Christmas story contests each year and use the money to buy presents for friends and family.  Christmas at Edaville Railroad are some of my fondest memories.  Also, Christmas is my mother's birthday, so the season holds special significance for her, and I always make an effort to do something for her, just for her, on that day.  For that reason, December the 25th will always have a fondness for me, as day to celebrate and be grateful for my Mum.
      But the rest of it needs to be burnt to the ground.  Seriously, this shit needs to GO.
      First off, Christmas is the earliest lesson in hypocrisy Americans instill into their children.  You tell them it's to celebrate Christ's birth, and if not directly for that, then many non-religious parents often tell their children 'it's a nice tradition.  Then there's the 'Casual Christians' who do Christmas and Easter, maybe go to the local Christian church for a baptism, christening or whatever, they also will invest just as heavily into decorations and present buying as more devout Christians.  And even if you are a devoted Christian, you go along with it all, despite that there is no basis for Christmas in the Bible, no Santa Claus, that the holiday was usurped from the pagan ritual Saturnalia, where the Tree represents Male Virility and the Phalus, all as a means of attracting Pagans to Christianity, since obedient Christians were far easier to control through fear and promise of reward than unruly, nature worshiping Pagans.  So the first hypocrisy is that children observe their parents putting all this effort towards a religion that at all other times isn't that important, or their devout Christian family eagerly hijacking a hodgepodge of other cultures' and religions' aspects and claiming them as their own in the name of Christ's birth.
      Then there's Santa Claus.  The most common lie American parents tell their children.  Now, just think about this for moment:  Santa Claus isn't an imaginary friend that children come up with on their own as they explore their developing creativity.  It's not some healthy exercise in imagination.  Parents tell their children the myth as a way of getting them to behave through the process of reward or punishment.  As side notes there are sentiments like 'tis better to give than recieve' and 'its the thought that counts' but those are mere drops of charity and selflessness against an ocean of greed and materialism.  Christmas is not about the act of caring for one another that Christ stressed above all else, it's about getting stuff.  Don't believe me?  Give your 8 year old a bunch of receipts for all the donations to starving children in Africa.  See how well that goes over.  Try it on your spouse or significant other if you want to see the same reaction diffused through more complex, adult prisms of psychology.  With few exceptions, the more someone claims to love Christmas, the more pissed off they are when you don't give them what they want.  That's the second hypocrisy, we tell our kids as they're being raised that money and possessions don't matter while we devote six weeks of the year towards the complete opposite.  
     Christmas in America is about buying stuff for other people, expecting to get stuff from other people in return.  This is not charity or spirituality.  This is commerce.
      So by the time kids are old enough to figure out that Santa isn't real, they're so used to all the presents and food and celebration associated with Christmas, they don't really care they've been lied to and indoctrinated into a system that will turn them into the same thing as their parents:  People so obsessed with vicariously reviving their own Christmas memories that they eagerly instill and inflict them on their own children.  So the cycle continues, growing rapaciously as each generation tries to make Christmas even  more fabulous for their kids than they remember ever having.  That's the third and most insidious hypocrisy:  Even after you realize what a scam it is, you're so addicted to your memories of it, you feel like you're denying your kids of something if you don't reproduce and or exceed your own Christmases. 
       Then there's all the trimmings.  Christmas music starts earlier and earlier on radio stations every year, and do you know why?  Because the mega corporations that own them don't have to pay for as many (if any) DJs on the air.  Machines just blare out what used to be special songs (because you only heard them for a little while around Christmas when I was a child, Christmas music played in stores and on the radio for maybe two weeks before the holiday) so that by the time December even arrives, most of us ready to slice up Frosty's Magic Hat, skin Rudolph for venison burgers and burn down Winter Wonderland.  We are inundated with this shit not out of festivity, but because it saves Clear Channel and their ilk a shit ton of money.
       Oh, and all that pretty paper?  An environmental travesty.  In Germany, where the tradition of wrapping presents began, wrapping paper is now all but illegal.  To offer a gift wrapped present at Christmas is a major faux pax, due to the insane amount of waste all the plastic and mylar bows, ribbons and chemical laden paper produces.  Factor in all the old electronics and outdated products getting tossed along with the materials going into the new models, and Christmas racks up a carbon footprint every year that dwarfs the worst environmental disaster in history:
       The BP oil spill resulted in a roughly 4.6 million pound carbon footprint.
       Christmas 2011 left a 69.7 million METRIC TON footprint.
      All the traffic to buy stuff, all the electricity for lights and displays, all the food that we don't need to eat, all of that adds up, fast.  And it gets bigger every year.  
       Many people have fond memories of Christmas, myself included.  Many of us think of our Grandparents and spending time with family, snowmen and bright starry nights with crisp snow and smoke rising invitingly from chimneys.  Charlie Brown and Linus telling us the true meaning of Christmas while the Whos sing and the Grinch grows a heart and Rudolph finds homes for the Misfit Toys.
        That's what we want to believe Christmas is.  But I'm sorry.  It's not.
        Christmas got taken over.  The twentieth century saw it bought and sold, then repackaged and resold to 1st World families as something so precious and important, that other holidays had to take a back seat. Forget about Thanksgiving, go shopping.
        Because if you don't buy that hunk of plastic and metal assembled by a near slave in a distant country, wrap it up in expensively dyed carcinogenic paper, and then throw all of that excess away afterwards while you get fatter on the couch, well then... you've robbed your family or kids of something precious.
        Christmas is the sort of thing that renders all the good you might do, all the recycling, all the low energy appliances, all the donations you make to feed the hungry (pointless when you make a glutton of yourself) or even the ones you make during the holidays (The Salvation Army is a faith based organization that seeks to make gay marriage and abortion illegal, in case you didn't know) utterly insignificant.  Christmas is justifying strangling the planet and programming your children to do the same because society and the media have sold you the idea that it's all okay if done in the name of Christmas.
         So okay FOX News, I wasn't going to, but if you want to declare a 'War on Christmas' I'm all for it.  I still like the idea of Revolution better though.  Make it more about seeing and being with your loved ones than buying them shit.  Truly think of others, make the effort to donate to the Charities you believe in, not the ones hanging out in front of Best Buy.  Wrap your presents in paper from around the house, a gift wrapped in a paper bag that you can even decorate yourself, tied with a reusable and gorgeous cloth ribbon and a sprig of holy will be far more memorable than that 3D Santa paper with the disposable bow.  Maybe help out a shelter to remind you of how much you already have.  Make Christmas mean something again.  Something that the guy who it's supposed to be about would approve of: caring about other people, the planet, not just instant gratification for you and your kids.
        Happy Holidays.
   
         LTJHP, out.