It’s Commercial Christmastide. The irony of being overweight, bearded, but not full of yuletide mirth is not completely lost on me. I’ve had 40 years to fall in love with the month of December. My failure to do so is a great annual annoyance for me.
My feelings about this time of year are ambivalent. On the one hand, I like the idea of a festival of lights on these dark days. On the other hand, no amount of seasonal lighting distracts me from the thought that where I live could be better if it were relocated every winter nearer the equator. The cold and short days displease and depress me, regardless of how many lights are strung or how many Christmas hymns I suffer myself to sing. On the one hand, I appreciate the story of how God so loved His creation that He incarnated Himself to walk among us. On the other hand, I note that Christmas is no longer primarily about the birth of a great social teacher and/or Our Savior.
The real reason for the season is crass commercialism and buying things. It would be nice if it were about how God brings Love into the world in the most unexpected ways. But the War on Christmas was won a long time ago by retailers and creditors, so why are we shitting ourselves?
The victors of this war now forcefully occupy Christmas with their own armies of pecuniary meanings and shallow simulacrums of joy. Christmas as-it-is celebrates not the annual rebirth of hope amongst us, but only that businesses will make a bundle for their owners. It would be very difficult to vanquish the occupying force in favor of promoting kindness or holiness or awe or peace on earth. Even the events that have a charitable color, such as food bank can drives, are sponsored by commercial interests
Participation in this consumerism and gluttony is not optional. One may resist the occupation, but there are emotional hooks to make some spending and overeating obligatory. Unlike Halloween or Valentine’s day, the onslaught of Christmas cannot be avoided. Those who try to opt out, who don’t have the good familial relationships needed to participate adequately, or who have insufficient friends with whom to make merry will be subjected to guilt, ridicule, and various forms of social coercion.
As an example, let’s consider Frank Capra, terrorist. The director of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” is the leader of a massive jihadist movement to play his movie on television late on holiday nights when people are supposed to be with loving families and friends. It is timed as a punishment and lesson for the select few of us who instead find that we have no family or friends we would like to spend this time of obligatory cheer with. Instead, we are watching late-night television, alone.
In several lonely or depressed Christmas years I have been up late watching George try to kill himself. I am always disappointed when he fails. Having received a promotion at work, Clarence, the obnoxious meddler of an angel, then delivers an indictment against all of us who are watching this movie late at night in absence of social connection with other human beings. He glibly reminds the man who just failed to kill himself that “No man is a failure who has friends.” The obviously-related statement, “A person who may not have enough friends may be a failure” is hell on lonely people who are watching late-night television instead of conventionally celebrating the holidays.
And of course, there is “A Christmas Carol. I say Scrooge was right before the end of the play, before the visits of the ghosts, before he had a change of heart. “What is Christmas,” he asks, “but a time for spending money one doesn’t have?” A person who asks such sensible questions about this consumerist holiday will be labeled with the epithet “Scrooge.”
There are other punishments meted out to those of us who don’t feel Christmas. Despite having died numerous years ago, Andy Williams repeats his fatuous claim that this is the most wonderful time of the years over and over and over again via loudspeakers in every manner of commercial space. We know that the most wonderful time of the year is Beltane, but powerful economic actors want to reinforce the obligatory glee.
I am so glad at this time of year that I do not have children. Parents who fail to participate in Christmas, even non-Christian parents, can expect even greater amounts of guilt or shame heaped upon them. When I was a child, we had gift exchanges in our extended family. Being enlightened or naïve, my parents gave me materials to make things for family; these gifts were embarrassments in contrast to the fine goods other child cousins’ parents bought for them to give. You cannot escape; attempts will end in disgrace.
All of this is an explanation of how I feel. Some people will have a merry Christmas, and the rest of us will hear that empty phrase over and over while our inadequacies as consumers, family members, and friends eats away at any joy we may have distantly remembered.
So Merry Christmas!
