Commercial Christmas season begins!

Deck the malls with bows of holly: fa la la la la, la la, la la!
T’is the season to go shopping: fa la la la la, la la, la la!
Merchants making off with all your dollars: fa la la, la la la, la la la …
It’s enough to make me holler: FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA, LA LA!!!

* * *

Jingle bells, nothing sells like a Christmas ad today —
Get those decorations up, now, hurry, don’t delay, hey!
The holidays are in the air, or so it would seem …
When we’re saying “Merry Christmas” weeks ahead of Halloween!

Dashing through the stores, credit cards in hand,
Christmas trees galore: it’s a Winter Wonderland!
Newspaper ads will say, “to help now quench your thirst,
Our groc’ry stores have fresh egg nog in by November 1st!” Ho! [repeat refrain]

* * *

[For this one, picture a jazz guitar, an upright bass, the drummer using brushes instead of sticks, a piano soloist in the middle, and the late Mel Torme singing. This is actually my updated version of the one he co-wrote.]

Chestnuts roasting in the microwave,
Jill Frost nipping at your nose;
Holiday* carols being played on Muzak,
[* Pronounced like Hanukkah or chutzpah.]
And folks dressed up as … Arctic Native Americans.**
[** It won't all fit, but the awkwardness is the point of it, so force it in anyway.]

Everybody knows a Visa and a Mastercard
Will help to make the season bright;
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight!

They know that Santa’s on his way
To every shopping mall across the U.S.A.!
And every mother’s child will want to spy
To see if their parents really know what to buy!

And so I’m offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two:
Although it’s been said many times, many ways …
Season’s Greetings to you!

[Nightclub jazz piano solo]

And so I’m offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two:
Although it’s been said many times, many ways …
Happy Hanukkah — Groovy Kwanzaa — Merry X-mas — to you!

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Yes, it’s that time of year again, and for the first time does the Annals live to see it. So, a few thoughts on that are on tap here, in conjunction with my first real report from the netherworld of Mordor, since these are quite linked….

* * *

Two days ago, we Americans observed the national day of thanksgiving, the only holiday not actually legislated but rather proclaimed by the President of the United States at his discretion on an annual basis. Indeed, with the lone exception of Thomas Jefferson, every President has continued this tradition begun with George Washington himself, by now a curious relic of a time when Americans were not so consistent with the logical implications of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The anti-Christian Left, while dishonest in terms of the intent of the Founders in this regard, do nonetheless ruthlessly exploit the weakness in what the Founders constructed: if a mutiplicity of cults (with none anywhere near a majority) practically excludes the Federal government from official endorsement of any one of them, must it then not entertain even a derivative consensus of several cults in combination? On what legitimate basis, if the U.S. Government cannot explicitly profess Jesus Christ as Lord, could it then even be “generically” “Christian”?

It is objectively right that a civil government appoint an official day of thanksgiving … to the real God, Three Persons in one Substance, as revealed through our Sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ, and subsequently through the one and only Church He founded under the authority of St. Peter and the successor Bishops of Rome. But exactly to whom (or rather to what?) does the American polity give thanks on that appointed day? Some “generic” conception of God? The Great Architect of the Universe, perhaps? Observe that I speak here of the American polity, the official apparatus of State, as distinguished from each and every one of the American people individually.

Indeed, whatever the civil government does or does not do that day, we each can co-opt it and Catholicize it — as, in her curious way, Canadian blogmistress Hilary White and some of her friends have done (apparently in thanksgiving that John Kerry did not win our last election as all the soul-dead liberal Canadians wanted).* For that reason, I completely disagree with those Catholic traditionalists who refuse to observe the holiday as a protest against its original Puritan conception as a substitute feast day for Christmas, which it was until about the mid-19th century in most of New England.

* * *

The emergence and subsequent development of the peculiarly American conception of the Christmas season is proof that while culture (or the faux resemblance thereof) may inspire commerce, it is really commerce that is the king of American culture.

Before the mid-19th century, Christmas was celebrated by only some of the American people, principally Catholics, Anglicans, and those of some of the sects derived from Anglicanism. It was all very low-key, at least in terms of its not being anything more than a festival of religious observance alongside the eating, drinking, and being merry that, correctly, only began on Dec. 25th. (Even the Anglicans preserved the notion of the Advent season as having a penitential and expectational character.) I don’t know enough to say to what extent gift-giving was involved, or what was exchanged if so. [This is a blog entry, folks, not a research paper. If you have any clues, send me some links, please.]

Then came Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843), which was enthusiastically received in America, then under the heavy influence of the Transcendentalist authors (many of whom had Unitarian backgrounds). This instant classic contained therein already the humanitarian aspect (”peace on earth, good will to men”**) that has always been one of the hallmarks of American Christmas culture.

More than with any other country perhaps in history, American culture is singularly defined by its commercial element, and the commercial avenues of exploiting the sentiment fostered by Dickens’ book not only quickly emerged in its aftermath, but given the fact that the primary wellspring of American culture, Boston (and New England as a whole), had no previous Christmas customs — and, therefore, Christmas was not a national phenomenon, just a local and religious one here and there — it was easy for the big-city department stores to fashion the American Christmas culture entirely according to their advantage.

* * *

In two significant ways is it apparent that the American Christmas and the Commercial Christmas are one and the same. (I’m sorry, but the term “holiday season” will never be used in these pages except in derision.)

The shameless and rampant materialism, for which the only “antidote” offered is a purely naturalistic “peace on earth” humanitarianism, devoid of anything genuinely supernatural and therefore likewise devoid of any real merit.

The redefinition of the Christmas season, from a roughly four-week period of penitential preparation preceding twelve days of festivity starting Dec. 25th to a roughly four-week period of festivity that “just so happens” to double as the principal period for gift-buying for Dec. 25th, and which promptly starts winding down come Dec. 26th.

Our culture has completely bought into the mercantile Christmas calendar, thus making it quite difficult, if not for many of us (myself included) practically impossible, to completely observe the proper, religious seasonal calendar. The merchants have created their version of the “Christmassy” atmosphere (complete with playing even the religious carols that actually shouldn’t be heard before the night of Dec. 24th) — and we have so keyed upon this that everything else, like the “Christmas parties” at the office and in private life, etc., invariably take place during what is really the penitential season of Advent!

And when one grows up with this cultural observance, as I did (we weren’t religious at all in my youth), there is no way to completely disown it without in some way being artificial or pietistic. (Save for being in a traditionalist religious house, perhaps.) When I was in the seminary, I didn’t miss the trappings of the Commercial Christmas. When I subsequently lived alone, though, I would put up my generic “seasonal” decorations Thanksgiving weekend, but save the tree and Nativity set, alongside my Christmas CD’s and records, for after sunset Dec. 24th.)

* * *

So from where I stand now, in my particular quadrant of Mordor, I get to see the Commercial Christmas on the front lines, in the forward trenches. It’s my personal policy (and always has been) never to talk or even think much about job-related stuff when I’m not actually there, but I will make a few brief observations about what I’ve seen so far….

First of all, I survived yesterday, ten hours’ duty on “Black Friday,” but not without incident: sustaining both a lower-back injury that I officially reported to the management, as well as an ankle-sprain after my shift, both of which together left me useless to report for work today (and therefore, allowing me to finally make some kind of contribution to this space). They’re both healing, but my concern was for re-injuring one or the both of them so soon. I’ve had Sundays off so far, Deo gratias, so Monday will be my next test. Hopefully things will be healed by then….

But what have I seen so far? For me to have to do low-wage retail work at all (which I was determined, after the early 1990’s, to avoid at all costs), because the technical computer jobs are about as scarce as the manufacturing ones, is no good sign of a healthy economy to my eyes — but you’d never know we were having economic troubles when you see a goodly number of (ahem) “African-American” parents lay down hundreds of dollars on toys, vidiot games, TV’s, and other such stuff. I doubt it’s the welfare crowd, either: I work in a decidedly suburban store, albeit not one of the upscale chains, yet it draws from the population in the urban fringes. (There are also a number of black folk who live in rural areas west and south of Richmond.) Let’s just say I’ll bet that my store holds and handles more cash in a day than most bank branches….

And a few words about today’s toys themselves are in order. Never having the need to be concerned with such things in over 25 years, it’s obvious to me how much I’ve lost touch with that realm. That today’s toys are more electronically sophisticated is no surprise, of course. Yet, one thing that stands out is the sheer size and cost of certain items that weren’t around in my day: things like $100 radio-control cars and $300 miniature SUV’s for 3-5-year-old kids to ride! Then there is the fact that so many toys (and children’s clothes, for that matter) are cross-branded in some way, that is, as tools of pop culture in bearing the image and likeness of some movie or TV show or the characters therefrom. (With the inflated price-tags, from licensing royalites, of course.) From my standpoint, it seems one is hard-pressed to find ordinary clothes and bedding items for children, let alone things like dolls that aren’t tied into some manufactured pop-culture icon. And get what one popular line of dolls is called: “Bratz.” No doubt, just like many of today’s kids themselves….

And let’s not get me started on the fact that all of this stuff is made by the slave laborers in Communist China, just like just about anything else made these days. (That’s part of the Reagan legacy nobody wants to talk about. I remember seeing my first “made in China” clothes from Sears in 1982….)

Now, one last thing. My particular job requires me to get name-and-address information, so I see for myself just how ordinary, how commonplace, the phenomenon of cohabitating unmarried parents and “reconfigured” families is even among the non-yuppie, “regular folk” segment of the population, regardless of race. As I have doubtlessly said before, when this is the way so many people are living, is it no accident that there is a certain sympathy and viability for other types of “nontraditional families,” recent referenda results notwithstanding? People are so grace-dead, so soft in principles, that what is still repugnant in 2004 will yet be “acceptable” in some later day. Bet on it.

And so with that, I bid you all Happy Holidays!

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* If the esteemed Miss White wishes to yet again observe American cultural holiday traditions, she may replicate the lyrics to the Commercial Christmas ballads above and make use of them at the “holiday party” which must be held sometime during Advent — provided she invites me to it! (Though I must admit that I have no possible way of making it to Toronto in my foreseeable lifetime.) By the way, she has had a number of impressive recent posts on matters of Faith that I mean to comment on at some point in time.

** This phrase shows up in the familiar ballad “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” the Unitarian origins of which are evident in an examination of the lyrics, which put forth a lot of feel-good religious imagery but utterly omit any mention of the Name of our Lord or of His title as our Savior! Moreover, “good will to men” is a distortion of the phrase actually used by the Angel in Bethlehem, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, “and on earth, peace to men of good will”!