Christmas was ruined!

[mmcirvin]

The "War On Christmas" hysteria is going full steam again:

Governments that have put "holiday trees" on display have been lambasted, and retailers that wish customers "Happy Holidays" have been threatened with boycotts and pestered with phone calls and online petitions. Started three years ago, the campaign will be the groups' largest.

That these people see their paranoid, joy-killing shaming campaigns about how people celebrate a holiday as a fight against "political correctness" is one of the most extreme expressions of Poetic Justice as Fairness that I've ever seen.

(Especially since, before these campaigns began, the American religious right usually satisfied itself with complaining about the modern celebration of Christmas being too Santa-y and not Jesus-y enough. I have to admit that reframing their annual carping about Christmas in terms of a defense against anti-Christmas forces is a canny move.)

I'll also say what others have said before: my recollection is that all this genericized "Happy Holidays" stuff started not as a sop to Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her religion-averse friends, but as an attempt to be inclusive of Jews. It was perhaps somewhat feeble in that capacity—I know I've heard Jews complain about the ahistorical elevation of Hanukkah as a Christmas substitute—but I sometimes wonder if the campaign against "Happy Holidays" really has easily-offended secular humanists as its primary target.

Comments

[jarai.livejournal.com]

I don't think they're doing enough to bring back Christmas as it should be celebrated. THEY NEED TO BRING BACK KRAMPUS!

[jwgh]

I seem to remember complaints about the secularization and commercialization of Christmas from when I was growing up too. Do those still happen?

It seems like if you want to encourage public celebrations of a holiday in a commercial, secular culture the result will be the commercialization and secularization of that holiday, but I suppose that many would try to question the second half of that.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Oh, certainly. And of course the complaints about its commercialization happen right across the political board, from left to right, even though it never seems to stop it from proceeding.

War on Christmas?

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

Where do I sign up?

I don't particularly care about religious people celebrating their holidays in a personal manner, as they see fit. The problem I have with Christmas is that it's in the public space, for six weeks or more. It's pretty difficult to not celebrate it. Easter, Ramadan, Yom Kippur, I see very little of those and feel like I'm free to avoid them as I like.

Even the 'Happy Holidays' is kind of a weak concession to people who don't celebrate Christmas, as there are still lights, garlands, and a lot of really annoying music in every public space to make you feel out of place if the spirit is not moving you. I am not celebrating a holiday of any sort around this time (though I don't really mind getting a few days off). It's not that I mind the lights and decorations so much either, they just have unshakably unpleasant connotations for me. Christmas is such an emotionally charged (and especially neurotic) holiday for many families, so for dysfunctional families it tends to involve more drinking and fighting than average. I don't really like everyone I meet rousing those memories for me for six weeks straight. I know that this is the case for many other people too, so even though I support taking the religious connotations out of the public sphere, it's more of an issue of not enjoying having my unpleasant memories rubbed in my face.

Re: War on Christmas?

[darius.livejournal.com]

You can sort of sign up with the Christmas Resistance (http://www.xmasresistance.org/). They appear to be mostly against the gift-buying part, though.

Re: War on Christmas?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yes indeedy, there's that too: how you feel about this particular holiday has a lot to do with how you get on with your family, and for many people it's fairly painful (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mmcirvin/183998.html). I'd bet this is a larger source of animosity toward Christmas (and Thanksgiving as well) than anything having to do with religion. And the ubiquity of it comes more from the commercial angle than anything else.

As I said in that old post, I typically feel worn out by the season but Christmas itself is OK.

Re: War on Christmas?

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

I see I am repeating myself!

Yes, I'm similarly generally in favour of a quiet time spent with people that you haven't spent as much time with over the last year as you'd like, and it is nice to give and recieve small, thoughtful gifts as long as there is not too much pressure associated with it.

I think you hit the crux of it with the gift escalation being impossible to avoid when retailers stand to benefit, though. It's just too bad so many people let themselves get all in a tizzy over it. It seems to be a kind of token for some people. I get the sense that they think that if they get Christmas just right, it will magically improve their family life for the rest of the year, in the same way that a huge princess-style wedding is supposed to ensure a happy relationship. Focusing on one day is much easier than putting constant care and attention into your relationships, even if it is ineffectual. I bet they'd be more embarassed about it (if confused) if they were accused of having a Christmas fetish.

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

I wonder how many of these people wonder if they're going to hell for not inviting their gay family members to spend time with them on Christmas?

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

Maybe there needs to be a genuine war on Christmas. Not a literal one, but one where people say enough is enough already. Christmas gifts and decorations show up before Halloween, radio stations throw out their formats and play Christmas music from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day, and you can't throw a dead cow without hitting someone's garish Christmas light display. For the love of corn, cut it out already. You don't have to put lights on all 18 of your miniature fur trees for us to know you're really Christian. We'd believe you, even without the tinny sounds of "Feliz Navidad" coming from the Santa doll on your porch, you know the one, it's dressed like an 80s rap star.

It's all commercial, anyway. Why Christians feel so compelled to defend two solid months of crass commercialism that benefits a few megabillionaires and has nothing to do with Christianity is beyond me.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

No doubt about it, there's a queasy feeling in the air when the first trees and Santa Clauses start popping up around the middle of October.

I think jwgh got it right; in a capitalist and (by historical standards) secular culture there's no way to keep a holiday that revolves around giving gifts into a nauseating snowball of sales pressure, whatever it was historically. (I've become convinced that there was in fact no time or place when it was the quiet family religious observance that fundamentalists claim to want it to be; Christmas has usually been some sort of rowdy party time, and the hardest-line Christians have usually been against celebrating it entirely. One thing that's changed is that it used to just start ramping up on Dec. 24 or 25 and keep going after New Year's, whereas today it's all front-loaded into a period that starts even before December, because it's all about the buying and selling.)

I also think one of the things I like about the actual day is that the Christmas season is over. There's that week when the after-Christmas sales are happening (which often involve a sort of ironic inversion of Christmas imagery), everyone's quickly retooling for New Year's celebrations and the whole thing is sort of deflating like a punctured balloon. Many people who actually like the Christmas stuff get depressed around then but I've always liked it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think I missed a verb in a sentence up there. You can imagine what it was.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

Your point about there being no time when the holiday was just a religious observance is a good one, and supported by this article from one of the Buddhist groups I read: it has a lot of good insight into the history of Christmas (http://www.livejournal.com/community/buddhists/1491785.html?style=mine#cutid1). What I found interesting was the assertion that Americans may just not accept or realize that they are contributing to the commercialism that they say they don't approve of.

I'm often frustrated by the ingrained attitude that everyone in the country is entitled to Christmas gifts (or Valentines, or whatever) and if you don't get any, you're sad and should be pitied. A child (regardless of cultural or religious orientation) who doesn't get toys on Christmas is pitied, and it's a terrible thing to see in action.

Also the day itself means everything is closed, and the weather is usually crappy. Radio stations play Christmas music and TV channels have either marathons or Christmas movies (or marathons of Christmas movies.) At the very least you have to sit home and think all day about how you're not celebrating Christmas like everyone else is.

My favorite irony is the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas special, with its message of anti-commercialism, is still shown every year but it's been cut to make room for more commercials and/or to reduce its spiritual message.

I hate this time of year. Unfortunately, my hate has spilled all over your LJ. I have deleted the more inflammatory adjectives from my post, though.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Thing is, the irony was there from the beginning; Charles Schulz was always all about making a buck and getting endorsements. I remember the Dolley Madison Zingers ads being fairly thick on the ground in the early Seventies.