Time Drops #35: Christmas Week, 2023
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster
Greetings, Ticketholders!
And an early, Merry Christmas!
I've spoken at length in the past about my feelings on politically correct holiday greetings like "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings," so my Ticketholders out there know why "Merry Christmas" is my go-to greeting. And to top it off like that cheap plastic star we all give a pine tree colonoscopy this time of year (try replacing that visual with dancing sugarplums during your long winter's nap!), the holiday is called Christmas. Not Season Day or Holiday; Christmas. Even though its name begins with the butchered Hebrew surname of the Western God's only begotten son, Christmas ceased to be a strictly Christian holiday a long time ago. Much like Easter, another Jesus-centric holiday (celebrating the resurrection rather than the initial birth as Christmas was meant to), modern Christmas is a more strictly commercial holiday with much of its organic symbolism appropriated from folklore and pre-Judeo-Christian pagan cultures that used things like rabbits, eggs, trees, wreaths, and mistletoe as fertility symbols, and figures like Santa Claus and Krampus, while based on actual saints of the past, have been boiled down to anthropomorphized morality lessons with origins in various cultures.
It's a mess!
Do Christians and their various offshoot religions celebrate Christmas and Easter a bit closer in spirit to their respective faiths than do secular sinners like myself? Yes. Are there also non-Christmas-but-Christmas-like holidays this time of year that are celebrated by other cultures and need to be acknowledged and represented? Yes. But does that make Christmas stop being Christmas? It shouldn't. It would be crazy and un-American if it did. But it has made Americans less comfortable with calling Christmas...Christmas.
Remember: be sensitive to the cultures of others, but know that happiness is not a fungible thing. The only person who can really take the Christmas Spirit out of your Christmas is you. The only person who can diminish your Kwanzaa or Hannukah or other non-Christmas holiday enjoyment is you. There is nothing wrong with expressing what you celebrate. Be merry (or whatever your holiday adjective is) to yourselves, and the joy will spread.
Speaking of blatant, secular commercialism and the spreading of joy, you can also spread the joy
by commenting at the bottom of this post, Becoming A Ticketholder because I don't need to be an omnipotent toy distributor to know you haven't already, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and checking out my social media at the links below to like what you see and find your stockings hung carefully and stuffed with the latest news on my content and calendars thereof.
Here it is:
In the meantime, remember to like, comment, subscribe, join, follow, click up my ad revenue, and answer all those calls to action that you know so well.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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