Culture Wars 2008

With the unnameable holiday approaching, it's time for one of my regular rants about the war on Christmas.

First - is there a war on Thanksgiving? No. While the theory has always been that people should be taking off the day to thank God, this particular holiday has revolved around food for at least 200 years. The Pilgrims were added to it later. The account of the "first Thanksgiving" where the Pilgrims and the Indians gathered together was part of a propaganda booklet put together to encourage more colonists. Rather than talk about the months of short rations, it talked about the three days the y gorged themselves on migratory waterfowl.

As for Christmas, I don't care for a lot of ways that the holiday has evolved.

As recently as the early 1970s the holiday season didn't start until the day after Thanksgiving (which had not yet been named Black Friday). It was considered gauche to put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving and even the people who put them up in late November were considered to be rushing things.

Most stores added Christmas displays in early November with more being added in early December.

Of course, catalogs with Christmas decorations started arriving in October but that was understandable. Back then, the average delivery time for mail order was 6 weeks. If you didn't have it ordered by Thanksgiving then it wasn't going to arrive on time.

Christmas trees went up late. Most people still used natural trees and they dry up and shed their needles after a couple of weeks so there was a strong incentive to put the tree up close to Christmas and take it down promptly.

Currently the Christmas season starts in stores the week following the last weekend in October (when most Halloween parties are held.
 Thanksgiving is no longer in the equation. People start putting up their Christmas trees and decorations in mid-November although, thankfully, some people still wait until December.

There is a line in the movie The Incredibles, "When everyone is super then no one is." The same holds true for Christmas. When Christmas season goes on for two months and decorations are up for three then it is no longer a special time. What with people being slow to take down their decorations, the Christmas season is as long as Winter, just shifted over a couple of months.

At the same time, there is increasing public pressure to make Christmas a private holiday - something that you might celebrate with family and close friends but you are not public about. People wish "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" in case someone might be offended at hearing the C-word.

A couple of years ago Lowes got some bad publicity for a sign announcing their "holiday tree" selection. Somehow the internal memo was misunderstood. This year they announced their "family trees". They immediately apologized for using such a stupid term but even their revised catalog manages to hide behind manufacturer's terms. They only time they actually use the C-word is when it is part of the product name.

So we are expected to keep the economy going by spending ever increasing amounts of money for a holiday that we can't name for fear of offending someone.

Does something seem out-of-whack here?