Really? The ‘best’ time of the year?
Many of our supposedly “favorite things” during the holidays are, by any objective measure, actually quite unenjoyable.
“We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.”
— Clark Griswold
Clark Griswold’s profanity-riddled attempt to manifest the perfect holiday experience for his family is a great example of the sort of fake-enthusiasm we so often portray during the holiday season — and it’s one of the reasons it’s so easy to feel bah humbug about the whole damn thing.
For example, somewhere between panicking over whether the Elf on a Shelf was moved last night and hearing Mariah Carey screeching out a reminder that Santa Clause is coming to town, I start to miss the days when we marked the winter solstice by sharing terrible stories of evil witches or inhuman creatures beating or boiling the world’s misbehaving children.
(Seriously, explore the dark and forgotten side of history’s anti-Santas. It’s fascinating.)
Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoy much of what this time of year represents. In fact, a couple years ago I wrote about the unique way in which my adopted hometown of Las Vegas fills me with a sense of wonder around the holidays (click here to dive into such ramblings if you want) — and I genuinely appreciate the family time, good tidings and “magic” of the season.
However, does anyone else ever feel like we might have lost the plot a little on this whole “Christmas” thing?
Don’t worry: This isn’t some pointless religious screed about a Starbucks employee saying “Happy Holidays” rather than rejoicing in the long-ago birth of our savior. The secularization of this Christian holiday has never bothered me — and even if it did, I would never expect the rest of the world to conform to my particular religious inclinations.
Besides, it’s not as if Christianity has done a bang-up job of keeping the meaning of this holiday in focus on its own. From the beginning, Christmas has heavily appropriated most of its traditions from preexisting Roman and Norse festivals, creating a fairly nonlinear journey from celebrating the birth of some little boy in a manger to dragging dead trees into our living rooms and adorning them with lights.
(Indeed, much of Christian tradition looks like some cover band playing an album of Paganism’s greatest hits rather than an unadulterated celebration of God… but that’s an essay for another time. )
No, I’m not worried about all the commercialization, secularization and unabashedly capitalistic opportunism to be found on full display between Thanksgiving and the New Year.
Instead, I’m a bit more annoyed by the way in which we collectively pretend to enjoy many of our supposedly “favorite things” during the holidays — things that are, by any objective measure, actually quite unenjoyable.
I suppose we could begin listing examples by ripping into any number of Hallmark movies… but the truth is, a great many classic holiday stories are equally as banal.
Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, for example, is basically just the story of Danny Kaye gaslighting an old army buddy into getting romantically involved with an aspiring actress who doesn’t even want a relationship in the first place. That’s not exactly a riveting plotline the first time one sees it — and it doesn’t get better upon repeat viewings.
Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is another example of a movie that has endured despite being objectively unenjoyable — unenjoyable largely by design. After all, roughly 98 percent of the movie is little more than a tour through all of George Bailey’s failed dreams, which isn’t easy to watch (even when we know what’s coming at the end of the story).
(Also, it’s not a story that provides much of a believable ending. I know the townspeople all pitched in to cover the financial shortfall of Bailey’s Savings and Loan building, but let’s be honest: There isn’t a bank auditor in the world who would have excused the initial misappropriation of deposits. Not only did George never get to fulfill his lifelong dream of traveling the world, he probably also ended up in prison. Cheery stuff for Christmas, right?)
Despite the generally unwatchable or unenjoyable nature of a great many holiday “classics,” however, they nonetheless survive as treasured aspects of the season — beloved and celebrated by a great many throughout the world.
Simple nostalgia likely accounts for much of the reason. As Clark Griswold indicated while desperately clinging to his dream for an old-fashioned family Christmas, watching Bing croon a Christmas song for the millionth time on the silver screen gives us a way to remember the sense of magic we felt as children in a less overwhelming world.
Much of the performative holiday happenings we endure each year exist solely because they’ve become nostalgic memes in our cultural psyche, rather than objectively wonderous pieces of art, myth or tradition on their own merit.
(No wonder some of the season’s darker and more haunting traditions didn’t have as much cultural staying power as the story of a jolly fat guy breaking into our homes and leaving us free stuff.)
Before the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future decide to haunt me for such blasphemy however, let me point out there are things I actually do love about this time of year — the godawful cover songs relentlessly banging on in the background or the Christmas “classics” playing on a loop in the living room notwithstanding. (Seriously: if I have to hear an oversexualized Madonna butcher Eartha Kitt’s genuinely lovely classic, “Santa Baby,” one more goddamn time this year, the Elf on the Shelf is going to be traumatized by what he has to report back to Santa.)
Family, friends and that smile on your child’s face when they gleefully thank some jolly, red-suited arctic-dweller for a gift you labored to procure in time for the big day are among the great enjoyments in life.
And I guess that’s rather the point of the whole exercise.
Sure, the season might be far from a “winter wonderland” as we overindulge in eggnog to cope with the financial stress of buying gifts for every person in our lives — but there’s a reason we all pretend to enjoy even the most inane aspects of the holiday season: It makes us feel as if we’re navigating this world together with those we love, rather than wandering lonely through the wilds of life.
And at risk of making you think my heart has grown three sizes today, I can confidently say that makes all the disingenuous noise of the holiday season entirely worth it.
Merry Christmas!
Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change.
