I’ll leave it to the military historians to write the authoritative version, since, like most combatants, I’m far too close to the events that have just transpired. Even so, though the fog of war has barely cleared, it’s pretty clear that the War on Christmas has been won by a lily white, WASPish St Nick and his sidekick, Anglo-Saxon Jesus.
Festivus poles aside, as far as I could tell, this Christmas transpired like any other. During my one shopping trip to the mall, the department store workers I encountered assured me that they would be on their feet for long hours, as stores kept their minimum wage employees working from dawn ’til dusk, and well into the night, to be sure that any consumer who wanted to consume could do so at any hour of the day, on any day of the week. Though I neglected to save photographic evidence, I can assure you that the line for Santa at the mall was as long (and for the parents, as miserable) as ever, even on the early Sunday morning I chose to sneak in to shop.
Just like every other year, I was still burping up Thanksgiving turkey when I heard my first of thousands of Christmas carols blared from in-store Muzak systems. If the irrational urge to begin my Christmas shopping had overtaken me prior to consuming said turkey, I would have been able to sate that desire by a Thanksgiving Day trip to one of dozens of stores in my area that had Thanksgiving hours. Those stores that failed to resist the overwhelming force of Christmas and weren’t open on Thanksgiving still opened at zero dark thirty on Black Friday, they were still covered with the same tatty Christmas decorations that have graced our retail establishments for generations, and they were still selling the same cheap Chinese crap that is presently being ripped open by sleep-deprived children across this great land.
In short, it was the same damn thing, only more of it. The Jewish, Muslim and Hindu kids had to take Christmas off, not Hanukkah or Ramadan, and the only birthday being officially celebrated sure as hell isn’t Vishnu’s . Millions of dollars were again spent on liquor for work Christmas parties so Bill from Sales could feel up Patty from Accounting in the copy room. Black kids only saw a black Santa by special request.
We’re still putting the Caucasian and the Christ into our White Christmas, just like we always have, and only the delusional or hysterical think otherwise.
Baud
We are all Sarah Palin now.
raven
So what? The only thing you left off was the annual bitching about the same shit.
Baud
@raven:
On a political blog? Inconceivable.
c u n d gulag
After the long, brutal, “War on Christmas,” today is “Christmas Armistice Day.”
Tomorrow, at the malls, begins “The Battle of People Returning Shit They Don’t Like.”
And then, “The Laying-off and Firing of Temporary Help.”
And then, the armies regroup, for next years “War on Christmas.”
With a dust-up or two between the forces, at Easter.
Oh, the humanities!!!
Lurking Canadian
I took my son up to get a close look at the baby Jesus in the crèche at church last night. Somebody must have stolen the Jesus doll, because in the manger was a doll of a three-year old blond kid with blue eyes.
debbie
It’ll only get worse. Glenn Beck has said he’s going to take Disney down after being offended by a small Kwanzaa celebration he witnessed at Disneyworld during a Christmas vacation.
jurassicpork
It’s a Wonderful Life… if you’re a Republican. Merry Xmas, everyone.
c u n d gulag
Oh, and HAVE A MERRY… HAPPY… whatever floats your boat… TO ONE AND ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mustang Bobby
I hear there’s pockets of insurgents meeting today to plot the overthrow of the Baby Jesus: all the Jews are gathering at the Chinese restaurants, passing messages via fortune cookies.
zzyzx
“The Jewish, Muslim and Hindu kids had to take Christmas off, not Hanukkah or Ramadan”
YM “Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana” if you were taking about the Jews. Hanukkah is mainly celebrated because it happens to fall in mid December most years.
Keith G
Eee-gads DPM, I am as atheistic as one can get, yet your entry here seems quite whiny and petulant.Yeah, we live in a society with a dominant culture. Suck it up and find joy anyway.
Merry Christmas.
raven
I think we’ll load up the van and drive up to West Virginia just so I feel closer to Cole.
WereBear
Whatever your reason for the season, enjoy a festivity!
Baud
@raven:
Look for a car parked in the middle of a field. Cole will be nearby.
raven
@Baud: We can drive about 35 miles north of Blacksburg and get to the southern border, may have to do it since we have 2 hours to kill.
jeffreyw
Took the (no longer) fresh ham out of the oven at 6:00 this morning and slathered it with honey dijon, put it back for a spell at 350 to brown and set the glaze. Looks OK. Starting the side dishes, cranberries, a Brussels sprout/potato gratin. Thinking on a cider/honey’whole grain mustard gravy with some drippings. Not much more, some hot rolls. No pie, alas!
JPL
Merry Christmas!
Any idea what happened to the calendar this year?
agrippa
This article is a pretty good after action report on the actual “War on Christmas”.
MattF
I am looking forward to Beck vs. Disney. And in celebration of the Day After The Day After The Day Before, I suggest that tomorrow people go ahead and buy themselves something they want.
tybee
i bring you “coppa claus”
wsav.com/story/24262470/special-delivery-coppa-claus-brings
Cheap Jim
Well, I don’t know what they get up to in New York, but at the Mondawmin Mall in Baltimore, Santa was black, same as always.
articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-12-18/news/bs-md-black-santas-20131219_1_mondawmin-mall-santa-claus-k…
Rafer Janders
It’s only the first day of Christmas — there are eleven days left after this. A little early for an after-action report, I think….
Cassidy
It’s a Mix post. That’s assumed as soon as you see the name.
OzarkHillbilly
Xmas is a zombie. No matter how many holes we put in the myth of Jesus it always rears it’s ugly head again on Easter morning. I despair.
Jay in Oregon
@Keith G:
Because that is how things get better, right?
Me, I just get tired of being lectured about how Jesus is “the reason for the season” by people who seem insistent on ignoring his teachings anyway. If the War on Christmas is ever won, friendly fire will be a contributing factor.
MattF
And here’s the Pope, with that hippie-dippie ‘I love everybody’ shtick:
nytimes.com/reuters/2013/12/25/world/europe/25reuters-pope-christmas.html?_r=0
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@MattF:
Sort of bone headed. Atheists already hope for peace, for the most part. Also, for priests to stop
rapingMentoring children.Mike in NC
The local right-wing rag ran an announcement that in 2014 it will no longer feature weekly columns by the beloved Bill O’Reilly, since he has apparently siphoned enough money off of the redneck rubes with his annual “War on Xmas” stupidity that he’ll no longer be doing it.
Instead they will offer “thought-provoking” horseshit from uber-conservative maggot David Limbaugh. Was his Fat Bastard brother unavailable?
Gex
@Keith G: Secularists are tired of the war on “the war on Christmas.” Just get over it.
It’s not just atheists on this side of things you know. People in the dominant culture are also pretty tired of the right wing making this part of the culture wars.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rafer Janders:
“Five golden toques!”
“Four pounds of backbacon, three french toast, two turtlenecks”
“And a beer in a tree!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay in Oregon:
This. Just this.
The people who insist that Jesus is the reason for the season are wrong. Jeebus, Son of Mammon, is their reason for the season.
Me, I’m partial to axial tilt.
Lurking Canadian
@Villago Delenda Est: oh, take off, you hoser.
feebog
I avoided the war on Christmas almost altogether by spending the run up in Mexico. Two weeks of fishing, golf and sun. Oh sure, the cable channel had FOX and not MSNBC, but I was able to stream the TRMS segments when I wanted to, so no biggie. Plus, the Mexican people seem blissfully unaware that there was a war raging to the North of them. I would guess that almost none of them watch FOX. Too busy watching soccer and selling timeshares.
max
Even so, though the fog of war has barely cleared, it’s pretty clear that the War on Christmas has been won by a lily white, WASPish St Nick and his sidekick, Anglo-Saxon Jesus.
Enh. Said ‘war’ was won long ago by default. The Fox defense of the non-existent ‘War on Christmas’ has been a loser – now everybody knows about the Not Southern Baptist Santa, I can still say ‘Feliz Navidad, motherfuckers!’ and on an unrelated front it appears the entire state of Utah is getting gay married.
If we’re going backwards anywhere, it’s on abortion.
max
[‘Otherwise, most fronts are stalled out.’]
MomSense
@Baud:
I just read that with a lisp.
Brian S
Just like every other year, I was still burping up Thanksgiving turkey when I heard my first of thousands of Christmas carols blared from in-store Muzak systems.
I started hearing Christmas music in stores about a week after Halloween, and saw Christmas decorations on sale before Halloween. Christmas not only survived this year–it advanced the front into November and is threatening to digest Thanksgiving so it’ll be one big holiday.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Brian S: It was different where I am. There’s been a thing up here in Canada about that. For us, Remembrance Day on November 11 is the war dead memorial day. It’s not a holiday, but it’s considered an important day by most Canadians, to the extent that if I wanted to take off from my office at 10:30 to go down to the local cenotaph and return after lunch, that’s basically cool, and is for most folks who don’t work in service jobs. It’s not universal, but you’ll often find people hushing up for the two minutes of silence at 11 even in coffee shops and so on. For the last few years, there’s been a movement to push back the start of Christmas holiday shopping brouhaha until after November 11th out of respect for the dead, and here in Kingston (which is, among other things, a military town; Canada’s signals regiment is based here) it’s been basically successful.
November 11th is important because fundamentally it’s really the only other national high day other than Canada Day. Everything else is predicated on something other than Canadian civilization and citizenship, and being the good post-modernists that we (largely) are (Harper and his buffoonish wrecking crew notwithstanding), we understand that while there is a heavy privileging of Christian holidays over other faiths and ethnicities, they are not universally observed by Canadian citizens: for example, while St. Jean-Baptiste Day is an important holiday in Quebec, it’s not observed elsewhere. Only Canada Day and Remembrance Day are (and in Quebec you’ll even get some resentment towards Canada Day… but NOT Remembrance Day).
There have been two sides to this movement, one of which is respect for the dead, and the other of which is wishing to put strong limits on the consumptionist frenzy that is the holiday season.
Cassidy
@polyorchnid octopunch: Kingston was my favorite place to go when I was stationed at Fort Drum. I loved the pub across from the hotels. They had some great bands come through.
smedley the uncertain
dpm, a simple Bah! Humbug! would have covered it nicely. I do wish you a cheerier day tho’ and a brighter New Year.
Scott
Keith G
@Jay in Oregon:
Things are getting in better, in fits and starts.
No one has lectured me about any reason for this season (short of buying more booze or shit from China). Maybe I just hang out in better places. Or maybe I just am better at tuning out some of the rhetoric.
I’d rather concentrate on helping the poor survive than whether or not there is a manger in the town square.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Cassidy: You’re not really narrowing the range down there ;)
When (80s, 90s, or today!)? Was it right down by City Hall and the park on the waterfront? Or up a block or three?
My night job is playing guitar; I’ve played a lot of those rooms… be nice to figure out which one you’re talking about :)
Cassidy
@polyorchnid octopunch: 99-2000. It was Tirnanog.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Cassidy: I was living in Montreal in those days. I’ve played that place lots, though. That’s down in the old Prince George Hotel. Decent bar, but expensive… very expensive.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Cassidy: If you’re ever back up this way, ping me and let me know. We can go grab a drink and I’ll show you around :)
Cervantes
@Keith G:
You think there’s no fighting a dominant culture? Or you see no hope for anything better?
Prove it.
burnspbesq
For all those who choose to feel dickish about Christmas, Happy Feeling-Dickish-Day.
RobNYNY1957
Jesus isn’t the reason for the season. He’s the reason that December 25 is Christmas Day (emphasis on “day”). He’s not the reason that I was subjected to “Frosty the Snowman” in the back of a cab on October 28.