Christmas Analysis

On December 25th of every year, people around the world celebrate the birth of the lord Jesus Christ with decorated evergreen trees, candy filled over
-sized stockings, and of course, gifts. It is a time of giving, a time of love and goodwill towards fellow man, and don’t forget jolly old Santa Clause with his big white beard, red fluffy suit, dangerously large paunch, and enormous sack of gifts. To emulate this pudgy, jovial man people stuff their faces with calorie-dense foods and fritter away their yearly salaries on plastic shit mostly made in China. Yes, I’m talking about Christmas, the one time of the year where it’s considered ok to buy, eat, and drink (ironically) to excess.
Ideally, Christmas is a winter wonderland filled with joy and happiness and morbidly obese men squeezing their way down chimneys with bags filled with colorfully wrapped gifts for Jack and Sally. But, as one could expect, this is hardly the reality most face come December 25th. For me, the Christmas season brought nothing of the sort. Several days before Christmas I accompanied my father on a trip to Macy’s in hopes of finding evidence to use in this analysis. It was a very white Christmas at Macy’s. I got what I expected, people crowded together cursing under their breath at how crowded it was, lines of exhausted white people stretched throughout the store, each one tapping their feet, waiting to purchase Christmas gifts. Workers uselessly stationed at random places throughout the building giving samples of cologne and only increasing the general intensity of the store. When the people on line finally reached their destination, the look on their faces was priceless, or worth as much as they were spending. In short, the place was an absolute mob-scene, Macy’s as the scene and the consumers as the mob.
Macy’s is overwhelming if you don’t know what to look for or where to go, thankfully there were large red signs advertising the great sales in honor of the Christmas season. A pair of Levis that initially cost $200.00 were marked down to $150.00, $1000.00 dollar fur coats were half off… Kindness and generosity were in the air and they reeked of the sweat, perfume, and flatulence of the customers.
When we escaped from Macy’s we emerged into not a winter wonderland, but a freezing wasteland. Garbage lay in the black snow and people stumbled through it, nuzzling their despondent faces into their chests for warmth. The damn carolers didn’t help when they mockingly sang “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells.”
On Christmas day my family relaxed at home, breaking our past tradition of visiting my dad’s family in New Hampshire. There we typically wake up early, look through our stockings, assist my grandma to church, then stampede back home to open our gifts. This year we relaxed, we didn’t really worry about gifts, but since my parents are still Christian my mom bought me three shirts, a pair of pants, and a few books. As a gift to me my parents donated $300.00 to an organization helping to feed starving children in Africa. Then we went to Bryant Park and enjoyed the remainder of the day just walking around and talking, a pretty humble Christmas in comparison to the hyped up shopping sprees and binge eating frenzies.
But Christmas is more than just a consumer holiday… right? Christmas supposedly celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, after all, the root of the word “Christmas” is Christ. The actual origins of Christmas are not as glorious and true to the story as one would hope. Before Christianity became popular, many people would celebrate the pagan holiday of Yule on the 25th of December. However, Christians, hoping to snuff out holiday competition, planted Christmas on the same day as Yule and made everyone become Christian. It’s funny that people would celebrate the birth of their lord and savior on a day that he wasn’t even born, no less the same day as a pagan holiday. Christians also managed to steal the tradition of the evergreen tree as a symbol of life and birth, from the pagans. For a group of people that criticized the pagans as much as they did, the Christians had no problem stealing their traditions and symbols.
In our culture, the Christmas evergreen tree is supposed to symbolize fertility of land in the midst of winter; I don’t know where the snow came from seeing as Jesus was born in the middle east. This stolen symbol of life has been butchered like so many other meaningful symbols by American society. Ironically, to celebrate life and birth we kill a tree and watch it die, it’s once lush pine needles lying shriveled and dessicated on the living room floor.
Even the act of giving has lost all meaning. Back when China didn’t mass produce everything Americans bought, people actually made their own gifts. A father may have spent all year carving his son a toy boat or building him a sled that they would then play together on. Now parents buy their kids stuff from Toys R’ Us or GameStop and leave them to do whatever they will with it. “A cellphone, DESIGNED BY TEAM MOBILE, built by child labor in China, with help from the diamond war in Africa…Love, Mom.” What kind of culture have we become that we buy useless, superficial shit, fully aware that child labor is used by the big corporations to reap big profit, to get there? As an alternative, some people cut out the middle-man entirely and just give their kids money, if that counts for anything.
If parents are nice enough they lie to their kids about a morbidly obese white man in a velvety red suit who sneaks down the chimney…wait, that sounds horrifying! We all know and love him as Santa Claus. In Germany, people used to praise a real man named Saint Nicholas or, as they called him, Saint Nicklaus, a benefactor of children. Saint Nick differed from Santa in that he was not fat, he did not wear that silly suit, he was German, and he did not exactly give gifts to children. He was a benefactor of children and a religious symbol to children and adults alike. But once again Americans had to steal and destroy a beautiful and meaningful old tradition. Santa Clause was used as an advertising ploy for Coca Cola; they technically built Santa Claus. But no longer is Santa a symbol of generosity and good will, Coke turned him into a fat American man who teaches the glory of consumerism and helps them to sell their calorie-dense cocain-enriched beverage to children. They also robbed him of any clear religious association; they took away the “Saint” and put “Santa,” which is Spanish for saint, and also a clever trick because around the time Santa was created there were very few Spanish speaking people in the US. Coke turned him into a commercial icon, and a perfect excuse for kids to beg for gifts.
So what is the Christmas that we now know? Is it a consumerist holiday fueled by corporate-instilled greed, or is it a religious holiday, or is it both, or is it simply a day off where all of America can kick back and walk to the park with their families? I am not one to tell people how to live their lives, but with all the convoluted and immoral things that make Christmas what it is in America, I don’t see how people can bring themselves to perpetuate the bullshit and all of the fallacies that form it’s foundation. People need to revive the tradition of Saint Nicklaus before we are crushed beneath the weight of Santa Claus.