[img]7|left|Frédérik Sisa||no_popup[/img] Ah, yes. It’s time for carols, decked halls, wrapping paper and ribbons; time for candy canes, Santa Claus and elves; time for red-nosed reindeer, Charlie Brown, and the snowman; time for family gatherings, conifers, and ornaments; time for right-wing rants against holiday trees and secular progressives. In short, it’s Christmas time.
And it’s depressing.
Forget nonsense like Bill O’Reilly declaring victory on the “War on Christmas” he himself fabricated and promoted. Set aside, too, the silliness that is complaining about renaming a Christmas tree a holiday tree. (Not only does the tree itself have origins rooted in pagan traditions such as decorating homes with clippings from evergreen shrubs in celebration of the Winter Solstice and ancient Germanic peoples decorating evergreens with fruits and candles in honour of the god Woden, Christmas itself was a fabrication intended to wean pagan Romans off the December festival of Saturnalia. Given the Christian tradition of replacing existing holidays with Christian-ally correct copies in an attempt to convert the heathen masses, complaining about the word “holiday” replacing “Christmas” is like a bank robber complaining that someone stole his loot. But, as I said, it’s all gotten to be very silly.)
Forget the mean culture wars that do nothing but create rancour. Instead, let’s take a moment to think about how Christmas works. No sooner has Thanksgiving ended, Christmas carols get piped through stores’ radio system and decorations go up. Then the frenzy gradually builds to buy this and that, and along with that frenzy come the mind games involving trying to figure out who should get a gift and who shouldn’t. Is so and so going likely to give me something this year? If so, should I also get something to avoid offending them if they do, indeed, give me something? Should I participate in the office gift exchange, dishing out money for a gift to be given to a random co-worker – a co-worker, not necessarily a friend? And what does it say about gift-giving when people exchange lists of wanted things? Is it really possible to give a gift when you are expected to give a gift through individual or cultural expectations?
To top it off, there’s the stress of it all. The stress of shopping. The stress of planning. Financial stress. Family stress. It’s not Christmas, it’s Stressmas. Is anyone having fun? And let’s not get started with the dubious moral lesson of using presents to bribe kids into being good all year.
The Problem of the Gift
Commercialism is the problem, of course, but that’s rather obvious. The deeper issue takes off from commercialism and presents a cultural conundrum: What is the nature of a gift when it arises out of cultural expectations? In a roundtable discussion transcribed in Deconstruction in a Nutshell, Jacques Derrida says, “A gift should not even be acknowledged as such. As soon as I know that I give something, if I say ‘I am giving you something,’ I just canceled the gift. I congratulate myself or thank myself for giving something and then the circle has already started to cancel the gift.” In expanding on Derrida’s views on the Gift, John D. Caputo, in that same book, writes “If A gives B to C, then C is grateful to A and owes A a debt of gratitude, with the result that C, instead of being given something, is now in debt.” With A feeling self-satisfied, “The result, in short, is that…the conditions which make the gift possible also make it impossible.”
It isn’t necessary, however, to get into head-spinning post-modern academic detail to feel how the spirit of giving that underlies Christmas – torn between economics and authentic generosity – teeters on the edge of a precipice. And the problem is worse than a compromised spirit of giving. We hear about peace and goodwill towards men. We hear about love and joy. But however much these might exist during Christmas-time, they don’t carry over into the rest of the year. Whether it’s the CIA torture scandal, or the war(s), or the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, or anything else, for all the good that there is in the world – and, pessimism notwithstanding, there IS good in the world – there is also a certain bleakness, a certain existential malaise that comes from the fact that there is also a lot of pain, suffering and death. And the world will not have changed for the better for having gone through another Christmas.
Optimism in the Gloom
It’s been a long time since Christmas held any religious significance to me, a long time since my days as an altar boy. But for all my cheerful atheism, I still retain a strictly secular affection for Christmas (however blunted it is this year). I like the trees, the decorations, the festive atmosphere. Better yet, I like the idea of a festival celebrating the universal value of being good to one another – a sentiment that goes beyond Christianity and any other religion. In other words, while some people – like Bill O’Reilly and thefrontpageonline.com’s own fearless editor – prefer to get all huffy and bothered about the word “holiday,” I think that, however much Political Correctness can run amok, it’s far better to take a positive view of the whole thing. Holiday, as in, celebrating our diversity, embracing what we have in common to bring us together rather than the differences that divide us. Holiday, as in, something meaningfully experienced rather than mechanically repeated.
Maybe Christmas – that is, “the holidays” – should be celebrated, say, every five years. Instead of spending over a month out of 12 in Christmas lockdown mode, maybe over one month out of 60 would restore some sanity and meaning to the whole thing. If value comes from scarcity, then perhaps that “Christmas spirit,” whether interpreted religiously or secularly, will have more impact and value – and less irritation – if it is parsimoniously invoked.
I doubt that will happen, of course. So despite my gloomy disposition, I’ll stick to a glimmer of hope and wish Christian readers of thefrontpageonline.com a very Merry Christmas. To everyone else, may you have Happy Holidays. See you in the New Year.