Bah, Humbug!

Can Arnold Schwarzenegger save Christmas?

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
11/24/05
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/xmas.htm

    Last year, I wrote a piece called “A Festivus for the Rest of Us” which was about the Seinfeld-inspired anti-Christmas holiday in which Santa Claus is hanged from a bare aluminum pole.  It’s celebrated on the 23rd of December, and I learned about it for the first time several days after the fact, and promised my readers, many of whom share my misanthropic views of Christmas, that I would remind them of Festivus in time so they could refuse to make any preparations for the holiday.

    So.  Consider yourself duly reminded.  And my holiday advice is to not get a turkey that weighs more than twenty five pounds, because those bigger ones can put up a hell of a fight when it comes time to stuff them in the oven.  Get a small one that will peer plaintively at you through the oven door glass and essay a few tentative pecks at the glass before keeling over. Remember, it’s a lot cheaper to buy two small turkeys then it is to replace your oven.

    Bill O’Reilly wants to remind us all that liberals are engaged in a war on Christmas, and that he will lead the fight in defending America’s religious heritage and moral vales.

    As part of those moral values, he’s begging terrorists to attack San Francisco because voters decided to let schools decide if they wanted military recruiters to come on campus and annoy the teenagers or not.  I’m sure Jesus would approve.

    Confusing the issue is the fact that many, and perhaps most Americans absolutely hate Christmas.  Oh, not the religious holiday – few people have any problem with that, and those that do tend to be in churches that refuse to celebrate such idiolatry – or even the day itself.  They loathe the vast commercial ramp up, now a total of eight weeks and getting longer every year, before Christmas, when we all get mawkish tv specials and endless, endless cloying and annoying ads.

    All in favor of having Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman gutted, spitted, and left to rot over a pit filled with rabid wolverines, say “aye.”

    The ayes have it, by acclamation. 

    Scrooge had it right.  He was just a century too early, was all.  Back in the 1870s in London, Christmas season began about four days before the actual event, and was, by today’s standards of corporate excess, a relatively low-key affair.  Back then, it was easy for Fred to say, “What, you hold Christmas in your heart, uncle?” without sounding like a complete dork. 

    It’s pretty easy to spot the Christmas dorks.  They’re the ones who get dewy-eyed over spotting “How the Grinch stole Christmas” in the TV listings (and waterlogged Freds came early this year; one reporter noted the first airing of “Grinch” occured before Halloween!), have those idiotic inflatible snowbubbles in the front yard (oh, to be a mischievious 11-year-old, armed only with a sharp pointy object.  When we were kids, we had to settle for unscrewing a single bulb on an outdoor string half way, causing the entire string to go dark, and forcing the owner to spend an hour in -20 weather the next morning trying to replace a “bad bulb” in mittens in order to get his lights going again), and bob their heads back and forth to the usual tiresome department store Christmas muzak, like Laura Bush on crank. 

    Now, a lot of people, religious or not, look forward to the family gatherings and the Christmas feast and all that, and that’s fine.  Who’s gonna begrudge them? 

    It isn’t religious Christmas people hate.  It isn’t even the secular holiday itself.  It’s the commercial blare. 

    But the religious whacks are real easy to hate.  Pat Robertson, the fellow who wants God to punish Dover for kicking the religious ID-iots off their schoolboard, wants people to sue stores whose clerks don’t wish people a “Merry Christmas.”  No legitimate court in the country would uphold such a rule, and few employers would be willing to antagonize both their employees and their customers in such a manner.  Any boss who tried getting me to say “Merry Christmas” against my will would find a Christmas tree rammed up his ass, bottom end first. 

    I often wonder how it is Christians let sleazy bottom feeders like O’Reilly and Robertson speak for them like that. 

    James Dobson, who recently said that gay marriage would destroy the earth (“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.” – The Daily Oklahoman, 10/23/04) has a team of 800 lawyers ready to go out and do battle with any school that resists turning Christmas into a religious fete.  Or even errs on the side of caution.  Some schools don’t put up trees, although the tree is a part of several different religions, not to mention an integral part of the secular holiday.  The big thing with yuppies this year is upside-down trees suspended from the ceiling.  More room to put the loot, you know.  And I wonder how long it will be before some fundamentalist fruitloop decides that’s “satanic,” and tries to ban the practice? 

    Suppose a school puts up a tree upside down?  What would Dobson do?  Sue to have them put it at a proper Christian angle?  Or would he commend them for observing “Christmas” and suggest that next year, they put some angels on it (you know the battle for the decidedly non-Christian trees in schools is just part of a camel’s-nose approach toward pushing more and more overtly Christian symbols on the kids. )

    Of course, the fundamentalist whacks are still pretending that the ACLU is trying to get rid of Christmas altogether.  Never mind that the ACLU defends the rights of churches and private homeowners to have nativity scenes and other explicitly Christian ornaments in their yards for the season.  Indeed, you can even have Christian elements in a generally secular display on public land.  But as ususal, the Fundies, while screaming that they are under attack, want nothing less than the “right” to force everyone and the government to proselytize on their behalf.

    And the really stupid thing is that most people are already sick to fucking DEATH of Christmas, and its endless seige of ads, bad movies, stupid specials on TV, and forced gaiety.

    Do the religious nuts really think tossing Jesus into that toxic mix is actually going to promote Christianity?

    I’ll make a deal with the religious right.  Along about next Christmas, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be looking for work.  Let’s re-do “The Grinch who Stole Christmas,” with Arnie as the Grinch, only in this movie he’ll be the good guy.  If the religious right will help fund this movie, we’ll let Arnie wear a crucifix around his neck, and instead of gutting and spitting Santa Claus, we can CRUCIFY the son of a bitch!
               
    So?  Is it a deal?