Christmas From The Sidelines
Editors’ Note: In anticipation of becoming a sparsely-read author of an unsuccessful blog, I wrote the majority of this last Christmas Eve.
12/24/07
The other week, while flipping between NBA Basketball, The Squid and the Whale, and a study guide for Corporate Finance, I came across “The Grinch” cartoon and threw the remote to the side. For some reason, I just had to watch. I was eight years old again and I still hated Christmas.
For many people, “The Grinch” is a touching story about the holiday spirit, generosity, and doing the right thing. We’re supposed to root against the green creature and not want to touch him with a 39-and-a-half foot pole. If “The Grinch” were around today, he’d be a sex offender. Honestly though, I couldn’t help but empathize with “The Grinch.” I mean, just who the fuck do the Whos think they are anyway? The only character I really felt bad for was the dog. Who cares if the Whos get their lousy presents, there’s a dog here who’s going to have back problems.[1]
I also want to set the record straight on Dr. Seuss himself, a man who made his bones drawing racist WWII cartoons of German and Japanese soldiers. I mean seriously, the guy was a bigot. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is nothing but religious propaganda, a proselytized pamphlet disguised as a hypnotically entertaining children’s cartoon. I’m onto you Seuss. Just what are you a doctor of anyWho?[2] I challenge you to tell me that “The Grinch” isn’t a metaphor for a Jew who resents Christmas and then finally converts.
Well I am a Jew who resents Christmas. My ideal Christmas consists of Chinese food, a trip to the movies, and getting hammered. This year I am particularly looking forward to the Matzah Ball, the Jew event of the year where single Israelites gather on Christmas Eve to get drunk on He-Brew and hook up. There is nothing more painful than watching a Jew dance. A Jew dancing makes Elaine from Seinfeld look like Gregory Hines.
Meanwhile, my Christian friends send me text messages that read “enjoy your Kung Pao Chicken Jewboy!”, “make sure to water your Hannukah bush,” and my all-time holiday favorite, “thanks for killing Jesus, I just got Halo 3.”
This brings me to the debate of the sickening commercialization of Christmas and its inescapability outside of anyone who lives under a poker-faced inhabitant of Easter Island or some other rock.[3] Every year, hi-brow publications like The New Yorker and other magazines that I tell people that I read but really don’t publish articles about either a.) how commercialization is not a new cultural phenomenon, or b.) how corporate marketers have sunk to a new low this holiday season. But these articles can’t solve anything. That these articles and naysayers lampoon the mistletoe and egg noggin hangovers that others romanticize is bullshit and shouldn’t give you, the one who tells kids that Santa Clause doesn’t care about black people, some false sense of non-conformist entitlement; that you’re somehow the lone gunman on holding such a self-actualized conviction. Note to those who wish they were original: just because you’re drinking alone doesn’t mean you’re alone and just because you listen to The Beach Boys during December doesn’t make you some kind of apathetic historian to what unfolds and unwraps and regifts itself year after year.[4] It’s unavoidable and you’re better off acknowledging that you’re in on it. Just be aware that this admission does not make you Columbus or Zhang He or any other fucking scurvy-ridden, lemon-sucking adventurer or small-pox-toting missionary.[5] You’re part of the group whether you like it or not.[6]
To wrap up this prototypical, snow-shoveled dissertation,[7] we’re all perfectly aware of the commercialization of Christmas and these articles and criticisms of the unobvious obvious will never solve anything. The writers know it and we, the perpetual reader of perpetual articles about trudged-over topics, know it. But every year, as reliable as a drunken Salvation Army Santa Claus, the same article is trotted out like a diabetic reindeer and mildly revised to adjust to the mini-trends and gossip gripping the public and denouncing the wave of holiday shopping and faux-holiday cheer that occurs. For me, I am about as sick and tired of the counter-culture complainers of Xmas as I am of those who embrace it. This article isn’t anti-Christmas. If anything, this article is anti-anti-Christmas.[8] So go, spread your Christmas cheer, actually, don’t spread it, just try and be like us Jews. Internalize the fervor in your homes and don’t tell anybody about it unless their name ends in –stein or –man or –berg. So pass the kung-pao chicken and refill the egg nog you green goofy-foot sonuvabitch bastard! Don’t just sit there, use the pole that Mom gave you for Channukah last night.
[1] And possibly pneumonia, a small price to pay for not having to wear an embarrassing dog sweater that would only be embarrassing if dogs indeed had any form of actual self-conscious. (It’s almost like feeling bad for the fire hydrant soaked in dog urine.)
[2] Looking at The Grinch’s feet, my guess is podiatry.
[3] Even those who smoke aforementioned rocks are susceptible to the paradox, e.g. the homeless guy I gave a dollar to the other day who still maintained a politically correct adage on his cardboard sign that wished everyone a neutral “Happy Holidays.”
[4] “God Only Knows” how much I hate that Beach Boys song. Also, if you were introduced to the Beach Boys vis “Love Actually” then I suggest that you watch the “Grinch” on continuous loop until you are cured of tree sap holiday movies.
[5]I thought about mentioning the Treaty of Tordesillas here but that would be overkill.
[5a] Shit.
[6] Ex: Oh my G-d, you watch Arrested Development too! Wow that’s impressive. I thought I was the only one. And how original that you also like other name-drop insert-here seemingly obscure musician/surrealist director/whatever you think you do that nobody else has ever done.
[7] Children’s Tylenol procured rant.
[8] Again, even admitting such doesn’t make this writer some standout rogue. As surely as there isn’t a Santa Clause there is a small lesion of us out there somewhere, not congregating with each other, sitting alone in the apartment adjacent to your ugly sweater party and across the hall from Grandpa’s prescription-revitalized-chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-wildfire family Christmas.
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