Tis the season for decking the halls and caroling of the bells and little drummer boys drumming and lords a leaping and “War on Christmas” hysteria.
I have been hearing non-stop holiday variety on the radio for weeks. Black Friday now starts on Thursday. We have all but obliterated an entire holiday that is supposed to be about being thankful for what we have just to save a few bucks on flat screen TVs and Beats by Dr. Dre that, let’s be honest, are not gifts you’re giving.
How many holiday albums are released every year? We can always count on Michael Bublé and Josh Groban around this holly jolly time, but with each new season comes more covers of classics by artists new and old. For fuck’s sake, ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas? They find Christmas movies for every damn day of the month. A Christmas Story is put on 24 hour repeat. There is an entire Christmas Spectacular in Rockefeller Center that includes lighting a colossal evergreen tree (the tallest one ever was 100 feet, this year it’s 85).
You want to know what the real tragedy is? It’s not that we’re maybe becoming more inclusive of other religious practices, because one step into literally any store will show you exactly how proportionately we care about Hanukkah. Like, wow you gave them a whole shelf! And it’s certainly not that some people prefer to write “X-mas” and “take the ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christmas’” because Jesus was born in mid-June more likely than not. Bishops in 4th century Rome used the December 25th date to correspond with the winter solstice and traditional pagan rituals in order to convert the heathen sun-worshippers to Christianity.
No, the real tragedy is that we’ve become so consumed with greed that we have turned this holiday, regardless of whether you see it as a celebration of Jesus Christ or simply a season of giving and loving thy neighbor, into a commercialized circus wrought with consumerist greed and insincere holiday tidings.
As I sign off my last BAW as editor of Sawdust, I’ll leave you with the most clichéd of all the holiday Grinch-isms, but it’s one that you assholes seem to have forgotten nonetheless:
“Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” Yeah, maybe. And maybe next time you start running your mouth about why we’re no longer forcing little non-Christian boys and girls to chant along to “The First Noel,” I’ll refrain from punching you right in your reindeer games.
Sawdust out for the last time.