A Trigger Warning for Christmas?

I’m thinking that maybe I should put a trigger warning* on the Christmas cards I’m about to send out.  They have a picture of the nativity (a reproduction of a 15^th century painting). 

*Trigger warning for those who are not familiar with the term is “a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content).”  Teachers and professors are advised (sometimes required) to give such a warning to students when a subject to be addressed in class might prove upsetting to some.  

While my consideration of a trigger warning for my card is primarily in jest, it is also in response to learning that an associate professor of clinical psychology and sexuality studies from Minnesota, posted on his Twitter account that the “virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen,” and “There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario.” He concluded the tweet by writing “Happy holidays.”

So, those of us who enjoy Christmas, for religious or other reasons, can now consider ourselves complicit with those sexual predators called out by the MeToo movement.  We are also not to listen to a variety of Christmas or Winter season songs – “Baby Its Cold Outside” (date rape); “I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas” (racist); “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” (bullying), “Deck the Halls” (homophobic). I haven’t heard complaints yet, but I’m sure “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is a symbol of elder abuse.  Of course, we already have learned that Charlie Brown is racist from his Thanksgiving special.   And, the movie “Elf” includes the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” so it too must go.  I’m sure there is a long list of other offensive Christmas activities that we will eventually hear about.

Once upon a time in a Children’s story the Grinch stole Christmas.  There are real grinches who would not only spoil the fun of Christmas but put an end to it altogether.  They remind us that it is really a recycled pagan holiday, that we don’t know when Jesus was born, and that the word “Christmas” is not in the Bible.   We already know we should not be using the word Christmas – if we must give a season greeting it should be the generic “Happy Holidays.”

Debates.org has a debate poll asking the question “Should Christmas be abolished?”  The result:  49% yes, 51% no.  Reasons for yes include that the holiday is racist, sexist, and Christian, that it “gives false hope” to children, and that it is for capitalists.

Once upon a time in this country we were more tolerant.  Even if a holiday were not one that we chose to celebrate, we were tolerant of those who did.   We were not offended by, nor did we look for everything possible by which we could be offended in the holidays, beliefs, and activities of others.  I grew up on a street with Christians and Jews.  They did not celebrate each other’s holidays, but neither did they take offense at them.  They respected the other’s views and were tolerant of them.  They did not try to take the joy out of them or spoil them or end them altogether.

Today we do not have such tolerance.  Those who oppose Christmas are not content to let others enjoy the holiday.  Instead they would impose guilt, doubt, hatred on those who do.

In soviet Russia, the State took charge of what people should believe.  The goal was to establish State atheism.  Religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools.  Believers had to worship secretly; public displays of religion were prohibited.

Is that where this over-eager hunt for Christmas offenses leads?  It is certainly in line with the autocratic mind-set of dictatorship.  And with what seems to be more and more the prevalent mind-set of the progressives in this country.  The Democrats (most recently via Sen. Hirono) have told us that they are just too smart for the rest of us.  Perhaps that is why they believe that it is their job to tell us how to think and to act, what to celebrate and what is just too offensive, what we should feel guilty about and why we should just never be able to simply enjoy life without shame and guilt for our many sins and misdeeds.  And, among those, apparently, is the joy and fun of Christmas.

Lenin wrote, “Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.”  Marxism-Leninism advocates the suppression and ultimately the disappearance of religious beliefs, considering them to be "unscientific" and "superstitious”.

That is communism; we live in a country that protects a variety of beliefs and expects others (even those who think they are smarter than our bourgeois working class) to be tolerant of them.  The current war on seemingly every aspect of Christmas joy is simply a part of the war on everything that does not conform to one particular point of view.  It is a war, that if successful, will change this country completely and make it reminiscent of the joyless communism of the USSR.

The Hollowness of Show

We seem to live in a world where appearance is everything and there is an emptiness behind the superficial.

I watched a time lapse photo on Facebook of an artificial tree being erected in a family living room.  The video is cute and the “tree” is lovely, but I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing.  The point of the video was (I think) to show the world the “tree”  and that the family had gotten that job done. The time lapse encapsulated removing the "tree" from its box, stacking its tiers, turning on its pre-strung lights and adding the coordinated decorations.  When it was over you imagined the family simply returning to their everyday lives.

But isn’t Christmas and the holiday season not really about the tree or other decorations, but something deeper and far more meaningful?  We can all admire a perfectly erected artificial tree, but I would rather have a less than perfect tree and focus on the time together selecting (perhaps even cutting) it and decorating it (perhaps with homemade decorations or ones that are otherwise individually meaningful).  And, if it is only about the photo op of the “tree” or checking off the box that one put up a “tree” then we have lost any deeper understanding of what that tree might signify to us as an individual, to our family, to our faith, to our culture.

In contrast I recently watched some videos of holiday celebrations in Eastern Europe.  Families laid beautiful tables using special dishes, but the decorations in the homes were sparse.  One family had their celebration around a kitchen table with stove and sink as the backdrop.  Yet, in these videos, the families were focused on one another as they enjoyed the meanings and memories of the holiday.

I can remember birthday parties at our family’s kitchen table.  The table was well set and decorated, but the stove, sink, and cluttered kitchen counter were the backdrop.  I hope my children were not ashamed or embarrassed by this, especially when the typical child’s birthday (including those of their peers) was celebrated at some sort of entertainment center where the parents can demonstrate that they keep up with (or perhaps surpass) the Jones.

Appearances.  They seem to have become important ends in themselves.  Not just noteworthy celebrations, but daily life as well.  New homeowners feel compelled to completely furnish and decorate their new home immediately; no waiting and saving and buying piece by piece.  Slower acquisition results in a décor scheme that includes unmatched but complimentary pieces.  Perhaps not the perfection of a décor right out of a magazine photo, but a décor that one can feel is their own – that has meaning to the one who created it.

Yet, in all of the above, what will people drool over and compliment?  In most instances it will be the perfect artificial tree, holiday celebrations not in kitchens but in elaborately decorated homes, birthdays planned and carried out at some impersonal venue, homes that indeed look like a magazine photo.  The point is not the underlying meaning, but what it looks like to the rest of the world.  It is superficial beauty with a hollow core.

And it is not just our environments; it is ourselves as well.  The first questions asked upon meeting or hearing about someone are usually aimed at identifying where the person works and what their social status is.  Not who they are but what label we can slap on them.   Do we even care if there is anything beyond the surface that we label and then judge?

There is a hollowness in all of this.  An emptiness that reminds one of those philosophies that assert the emptiness and meaninglessness of life itself.  Perhaps that is why there is now so little interest in history or so much focus on making things better and feeling good in the moment with no thought to or concern for how it might affect the future. 

Let’s think about where this attitude leads.  If everything is nothing more than a “tree” to get out of a box, put up and move on, wondering “OK, that’s done, what’s next?”  then we are well on the way to not just denying but destroying our culture and with it our very souls.

There was a time when this country tried to make the many Native American Tribes give up their cultures, their languages, their ceremonies, their very way of life.  When this country came to realize the mistake that was, the Native cultures were only able to restore themselves and survive because the elders had preserved traditions and understood their deeper meanings and were able to pass this on to younger generations. 

Yet, as today’s PC police chip away at anything that is offensive to anyone, they are in effect doing what we tried to do to the Native cultures.  The progressive “inclusive” movement tries to make everyone think, act, and be alike.  That requires individuals and families to give up their personal traditions and beliefs – the things that tie them to both their past and their future.  It requires them to give up their very souls.

As we lose what is individually meaningful, we are losing the understanding that is necessary to preserve individual families and the culture that is their soul.  Some may think this is the way to a better world, to the utopia that is (and by its very nature must always be) a dream.  It is not.  Rather, it is the way to a loss of individuality, of one’s very being.  It is the way to a hollow and superficial world, a world that has no meaning and therefore no respect.  No respect for culture or for the families and individuals from which a culture derives. 

When there is no respect, no understanding, no meaning to something, then there is no need to sustain it; it can acceptably be destroyed and forgotten.  And hollow people can go about behaving as they are told, with no understanding of why and no individuality or meaning to their lives.  And that, at least in my opinion, is not a utopia.  It is instead a hollow world that can very easily collapse upon itself and cease to be.  When appearance – the show – is everything, then we must wonder what happens when the show ends and the curtains close.