You are reading the last Christmas column on this earth. Effective tomorrow, all columns related to Christmas have been banned. Just as people should not have the right to bear arms, whether concealed or naked, Christmas columns are just too dangerous, as is any uttering about Christmas.
You have heard about Christmas crackers — not a seasonal term of affection for white people or the practice of manipulating seasonal gift tubes — Christmas columns are even more explosive than those, and they are also so damn boring.
If you read a Christmas column you will likely have to hear about Jesus and Jesus being the reason for the season, a horrible saying packaged in one of mankind’s grossest uses of rhyme. Add to that visions of mangers; costume dramas or plastic dioramas, and combine such bourgeoisie displays with information from the Bible that indicates it is not a good idea to worship the semblance of a calf, and your soul is sure to burn in hell or smolder on a yuletide log in said location. There is also a good chance if you take kids to see a live manger scene, Johnny will be more focused on an animal pooping and Janey on the shiny faux ruby set in one of the wise men’s head coverings, with baby Jesus getting the short shrift.
If you read a Christmas column it is likely you will also have to endure talk about Santa, or Father Christmas. First of all, the missing Claus from Santa is irritating, like Cher not having a last name. Father Christmas presents a rhetorical meltdown, as in who can be the father of Christmas and who can be also “Father Christmas.” Bing — the “White Christmas” guy who sang and liked to play golf — with a priest’s collar? Father Christmas embodies the same kind of confusion I hear from people who think God and Jesus are the same; last time I consulted textual sources, God is Jesus’s father. But we are on the topic of Santa, and Jesus just snuck in on us, as is typical.
Back to this business of Santa. Spare me the idealized version, be it a childhood memory of a relative dressed up, but especially those nauseating feel-good commercials about Santa delivering consumable goods. No amount of Aleve will take care of having to pay attention to that sort of blitz.
And Santa at the mall? I’m sorry, but I really do not want any children to bounce on Santa’s lap. I don’t care if the people who bring us Santa in felted flesh were to assure us he has been castrated. Of course that would take some ‘splainin’ to the kids, killing time and deconstruct the anatomy of mythology while waiting in line. And while you’re at it, have the kids mentally assemble Dante’s Inferno and find a circle for the sugar plums and fairies. And any kits of gingerbread houses that are doomed to have imprecise angles glued by sugar.
And this “him” business with Santa. Santa is always male and white, unless you go to a strip club where it can be hard to tell, perhaps because the strip club is honest enough to acknowledge it is not an authority on the gender of mythical winter burglars, whether the young ladies dressed in festive hats only are Santas or elves, or some combination of both.
If you are counting reasons Christmas columns are out, finished, no more, kaput, add to your list the strange notion that peace on earth is wished by most writers of such pieces. The strange thing is that these writers probably are not even thinking that we have all sorts of wars going on and the depersonalized U.S. is off somewhere shooting people to ensure the blessings of democracy, cheap oil, gay marriage, and Hollywood. “Peace on earth” is said like “have a nice day” by a retail clerk, if you can locate one.
In case there are any Christmas columnists out there trying to slip a piece in before the ban goes into effect, please spare us anything related to Ferguson or the New York chokehold and do not reach out across the world to an Australian coffee shop named after a delicious European chocolate. Don’t use the symbols of death and terrorism to lacquer your shiny Christmas onto a purportedly gullible audience.
If you must, shine your apples and cut your pine tree twig this time of the year, but please, please, don’t tell us about it. And while you’re at it, if you really want to be old-fashioned, go ahead, crack your own nuts. I am buying mine in plastic from Costco, and they are the “non-seasonal” kind.