The litany begins as soon as children have acquired the beautiful gifts of language and intelligence they must develop in order to be effectively lied to. Santa Clause is where I'm going with this one, obviously, but Santa Clause is in a special class of lies because the people telling it know that they're lying, know that their child will eventually figure out that they're lying, and they will fight to protect their child from finding out the truth. If you tell a small child that there is no Santa Clause, their parents will usually respond as if you've said or done something rude. Their anger will usually be expressed with some locution like "ruining the magic of Christmas," but think about the scope of the lie that these people are telling their children. They are teaching their children that moral excellence should be pursued because of material rewards from an omniscient elf-slaver, not for its own goods. They are teaching their children that the expensive garbage they get for Christmas doesn't come out of their parents' pockets, out of the hard-earned money that they spend all year laboring for, but from a supernatural being whose motives are as inexplicable as his methods.
And if it isn't the magic gift-giver in the sky you're telling your children about, it's the other magic gift-giver in the sky: you know the one, the zombified madman who, in a miracle that only happens about once every ten to twenty years according to the combination of human superstitions, emerged from a virgin vagina into the company of some adoring astrologers, an unusually quiet father, and a mass genocide of children that is mentioned nowhere in history outside of the Bible. They are already fawning over the various shiny things that the Bethlehem religious tourism industry has crassly deployed to make a little money off the otherwise-unremarkable place where this miracle supposedly occurred (or was that Nazareth?). Half the story is an ancient cultural construct, the other half is a modern one. How many kings came to visit Jesus at his birth? They're never described as kings, or numbered, or named - and no child anywhere in America this year will be asked to think how strange that here they have eye witnesses to the greatest miracle in human history and nobody bothers to ask them their names. Not even Jesus's parents are curious. But then, they're busy tending to the little bundle in the manger, which must be hard work because Jesus was born in a stable - or was that a house?
And why pick December 25th? Because Christmas is about bullshit, that's why. Christmas goes out of its way to be full of shit, about history and otherwise. You know this point by know; it's a tiring refrain: Christmas is bullshit from the Norse, bullshit from the Gauls, bullshit from the Teutons, bullshit from a bunch of other pagans, and bullshit from the Christians all mixed together in one big, clogged, frothy bull toilet bowl. There's not a thing you do on Christmas that wasn't pried from the trampled ruins of somebody else's culture. Even the day was picked to align with the solstice celebrations of the astrology-obsessed idiots whose cultures were only a hair's breadth more scientifically literate than the Christians who exterminated them. In keeping with the spirit of Christmas (lying to children), children are usually taught that Christmas is a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
When the children are finished being lied to about Santa and Jesus, they'll no doubt be exposed to some godawful display of pure sap designed to tickle your deepest emotions with a precision matched only by the pornography industry. Perhaps your favorite is the Charlie Brown one, a stupid little story the point of which seems to be to me that a lifetime of utter failure is OK because Jesus was born in a manger. When the totality of Charlie Brown's utter incompetence comes raining down on him in a single massive shit-storm, it's up to Linus to deliver a heartrending speech to save the day - and he just tells the gathered children the same pagan nonsense the Bible does, and rather than solve any particular problems, it just cows the others into such pious stupefaction that they go right back to singing the contrived cultural holocaust that is American Christmas music. If you watch this sickening display of shameless profiteering by the atheist who invented Charlie Brown all the way to the end, you can even see the children making the same face that Charles M. Schultz made when his head was buried in advertisers' laps when the Charlie Brown Christmas special was first written.
You're a shill for cynical capitalists, Charlie Brown.
But the best lies are the ones they tell each other today about the dangers facing this sacred and magisterial holiday (you know, the one on which only lies are permitted). About the War on Christmas, and how the government is going to be outlawing Christianity and "Merry Christmas" and all this any day now (whenever they're done spending your tax dollars putting up cartoonish little Jesus displays on city hall lawns and other public spaces owned by Christianity), which actually has some precedent - Christmas has been banned in America before. It was by this sinister little cabal of liberal atheist secular-progressives we today refer to as the Puritans, who obviously wanted to outlaw Christmas because of their general hatred for Christianity. But I guarantee you, somewhere within the sphere of your friends and relatives, at least a handful of dull-eyed fools are staggering around shaking a faux-offended finger at any poor store clerk who dares wish them "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Because, in America, it's either Christ's way or the highway.
Because they want to protect the sanctity of Christmas, its good old-fashioned Christian character. The wholesome family story, the one that teaches good values and about God's love for humanity.
The one that was grafted onto a week-long pagan orgy to make conversion less inconvenient for the sinners, whose own story is a mixture of pagan hokum, Christian hokum, and our own hokum, where Christians lie to their children about only behaving morally for the material rewards from a fat peeping Tom who the Christians themselves know to be a lie, stuffing their fat asses with bad food ripped from factory-raised inanimate carbon blobs that some euphemistically refer to as "pigs" and "turkeys" while bad music written by advertisers plays over the radio because these advertisers have invented your childhood and your very notion of sentimentality to sell you things, things that we collectively shill out almost a quarter of a trillion dollars on it every year, unironically dropping a thousand dollars on a television to celebrate the supposed birth of a man who said "give everything you own to the poor." We buy them from stores that exploit the unemployed, dragging them into poverty-waged seasonal work because they know that people without jobs around Christmastime will do anything for any money. The really clever stores will run "charity drives" to get your brand loyalty up, then resell the crap you left for charity right back to you.
Everyone is lying to you about everything on Christmas. People act nice and cheerful because they're supposed to. It's "the spirit of Christmas" to pin your cheeks up and force a smile like you've had a couple of nerves in your face permanently attached to a car battery: "the spirit of Christmas" is lying to people about everything you can. From Santa to how happy you are to see old uncle so-and-so again, from Jesus to your appreciation to either some piece of crap you'll never use or a gift card that says "I'm only giving you this because I have to give you something but I can't just give you cash," from how nice it is to hear the old songs from childhood again like you've been hearing on loop for the last twelve hours a day every day for the last month to how your once-a-year appearance at church looks totally sincere in God's eyes and everybody at your church is so impressed with your piety, I say humbug on it. We shouldn't need a mass market festival, decked in pious platitudes, shrouded in lies and superstitions, to enjoy getting together with our families once in a while.
And that's the real secret: we don't. We do not need Christmas to get everything that we love about Christmas without everything we hate about Christmas. Your family would love to have more get-togethers, and they would love it even more if they could do it without the formalized insanity that is the Christmas season. Buying things for each other that are fun or useful is a nice thing to do, but like with all good deeds, it's hardly so good when you're compelled to do it by an inane but generally unquestionable social pressure. Christmas even takes that away from you; it automatically makes every good thing that happens on it seem less sincere, the same way it seems less sincere to give up your seat on the bus for an old person when five other people before you just did the exact same thing, the same way it seems less sincere to show affection for someone on Valentine's Day than on other days (even though Valentine's Day is about affection). Humbug, I say. Even the phrase I use to express my dislike for the holiday and the season comes from a goddamn Christmas special! Dammit Christmas, you've even taken away my ability to express my hatred for Christmas.
But the best lies are the ones they tell each other today about the dangers facing this sacred and magisterial holiday (you know, the one on which only lies are permitted). About the War on Christmas, and how the government is going to be outlawing Christianity and "Merry Christmas" and all this any day now (whenever they're done spending your tax dollars putting up cartoonish little Jesus displays on city hall lawns and other public spaces owned by Christianity), which actually has some precedent - Christmas has been banned in America before. It was by this sinister little cabal of liberal atheist secular-progressives we today refer to as the Puritans, who obviously wanted to outlaw Christmas because of their general hatred for Christianity. But I guarantee you, somewhere within the sphere of your friends and relatives, at least a handful of dull-eyed fools are staggering around shaking a faux-offended finger at any poor store clerk who dares wish them "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Because, in America, it's either Christ's way or the highway.
Because they want to protect the sanctity of Christmas, its good old-fashioned Christian character. The wholesome family story, the one that teaches good values and about God's love for humanity.
The one that was grafted onto a week-long pagan orgy to make conversion less inconvenient for the sinners, whose own story is a mixture of pagan hokum, Christian hokum, and our own hokum, where Christians lie to their children about only behaving morally for the material rewards from a fat peeping Tom who the Christians themselves know to be a lie, stuffing their fat asses with bad food ripped from factory-raised inanimate carbon blobs that some euphemistically refer to as "pigs" and "turkeys" while bad music written by advertisers plays over the radio because these advertisers have invented your childhood and your very notion of sentimentality to sell you things, things that we collectively shill out almost a quarter of a trillion dollars on it every year, unironically dropping a thousand dollars on a television to celebrate the supposed birth of a man who said "give everything you own to the poor." We buy them from stores that exploit the unemployed, dragging them into poverty-waged seasonal work because they know that people without jobs around Christmastime will do anything for any money. The really clever stores will run "charity drives" to get your brand loyalty up, then resell the crap you left for charity right back to you.
Everyone is lying to you about everything on Christmas. People act nice and cheerful because they're supposed to. It's "the spirit of Christmas" to pin your cheeks up and force a smile like you've had a couple of nerves in your face permanently attached to a car battery: "the spirit of Christmas" is lying to people about everything you can. From Santa to how happy you are to see old uncle so-and-so again, from Jesus to your appreciation to either some piece of crap you'll never use or a gift card that says "I'm only giving you this because I have to give you something but I can't just give you cash," from how nice it is to hear the old songs from childhood again like you've been hearing on loop for the last twelve hours a day every day for the last month to how your once-a-year appearance at church looks totally sincere in God's eyes and everybody at your church is so impressed with your piety, I say humbug on it. We shouldn't need a mass market festival, decked in pious platitudes, shrouded in lies and superstitions, to enjoy getting together with our families once in a while.
And that's the real secret: we don't. We do not need Christmas to get everything that we love about Christmas without everything we hate about Christmas. Your family would love to have more get-togethers, and they would love it even more if they could do it without the formalized insanity that is the Christmas season. Buying things for each other that are fun or useful is a nice thing to do, but like with all good deeds, it's hardly so good when you're compelled to do it by an inane but generally unquestionable social pressure. Christmas even takes that away from you; it automatically makes every good thing that happens on it seem less sincere, the same way it seems less sincere to give up your seat on the bus for an old person when five other people before you just did the exact same thing, the same way it seems less sincere to show affection for someone on Valentine's Day than on other days (even though Valentine's Day is about affection). Humbug, I say. Even the phrase I use to express my dislike for the holiday and the season comes from a goddamn Christmas special! Dammit Christmas, you've even taken away my ability to express my hatred for Christmas.
3 comments:
Charles Schulz was still a Lutheran when “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was produced in 1965. He became a secular humanist sometime in the late 1980s.
At least it's over now...!
I like that that you say {as|like} my friend thanks
Post a Comment