Despertar

christmas is carnage, said the duck

False. Christmas is not evil, it's wonderful and fun. A seasonal spurt of consumerist fervor is, at worst, inconvenient and maybe kind of dumb. It isn't evil.

For three years in a row (Decembers 1990-1992), my mother wiped out her entire checking account, buying us presents. Every year, she would forgo sleep the entire week before Christmas, staying up all night to wrap presents, so that every morning, our little routine, we'd run into her bedroom in our pajamas and find a stack of newly wrapped presents waiting to be carried down to the tree. When she got tired of wrapping presents, usually an hour or so before the crack of dawn on Christmas morning, she'd just spread the unwrapped presents out alongside the wrapped ones and tell us they were from Santa. Her goal was for each of us, my brother and me, to have every single reasonable thing on our Christmas lists. She succeeded, too: Across, let's say, ten childhood Christmases, I only remember being disappointed once. (Mom thought the Mommy's Having a Baby doll was just too freaking weird.)

This did not teach us greed, or misplace our priorities. We did not grow into materialistic asshole adults. When Christmas approaches, I don't spend the season spinning my wheels over what I want to give and be given. (I haven't really wanted anything for about the past five years, except for last year, a pair of leather boots, and this year, a Magic Bullet.)

I do, however, feel absolutely giddy with excitement when I find the perfect gift for someone I care about. I have an almost Pavlovian pleasure response when I hear Christmas music or see a sparkly red and green display in a department store. I look forward to seeing my cousins, sitting next to my Philadelphia aunt at Christmas dinner.

Is this a have/have-not kind of thing? Maybe. Would it make sense for someone who hadn't enjoyed such a privileged childhood to resent me for kind of loving Christmas? Probably. Does this make me want to burn my worldly possessions and skip Christmas every year for the rest of my life? It does not.

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I totally understand why the holiday season would annoy someone like Aaron, who has to put up with capitalist bullshit for a living. Working at Wal-Mart would probably make me hate a lot of things, most of all any event at the core of a busy season.

What I do not understand is how so many unaffected people subscribe to the assumption that consumerism is so terrible. I'm not going to make an argument as to whether and how it propels our illustrious economy. I'm only going to suggest that maybe that's just a consequence of engaging in something festive and satisfying, instead of a reason not to engage. Looking for meaning in a shoe store is pathetic. Finding the perfect pair of shoes and trembling with the anticipation of handing them over, prettily wrapped, to your cherished daughter is priceless.

(It kind of reminds me of the Trader Joe's syndrome. Ninety percent of my law school friends, who are kind of pretentious and douchey by definition, refuse to shop at any grocery store that isn't Trader Joe's, having convinced themselves that where Trader Joe's is natural and pure, other chain groceries are pedestrian and evil. It makes no sense. It's a belief relying on circular logic.)

Besides which, I'm not even into the whole Jesus part of it. Non-Christians get, in some cases, just as excited about Christmas as Christ warriors do. More excited, sometimes. It is obvious that society needs festive respites; that's why weekends and summer vacation are built into our secular lives. Even if I decide not to raise my kids in a church, I'm sure I'll want them to have the joy of watching me have the joy of going totally crazy at Christmastime.

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