Christmas Madness

A holiday challenge: Watch one hour of prime time network or major cable TV before Christmas. Note the tone of each Christmas-themed commercial.

You will find: The majority are shallow, frenetic, musically inane, and seem to assume we can't understand a message if it isn't irreverent or struggling to rise above 6th-grade humor.

Why are we so afraid of being sincere, genuine, and vulnerable?

I believe it is (largely) because 1) many of the people that create the messages we consume have been hurt beyond repair; 2) that the naiveté of the holidays is associated with children, and that maturing children naturally avoid the association into adulthood; and 3) the jaded response of those hardened by 1 & 2 eventually rubs off on the rest of us, who after awhile tire of trying to be jolly in a world of grumps.[1]

I occasionally tell myself I'm going to stop celebrating Christmas. I mean totally. No tree, no gifts, no music, nothing. Because the world has lost it's balance, its moral bearing, it's sense of propriety and good will.

It doesn't matter if those things are right or wrong, if they descend from gods or are inventions of men; they are necessary for an ordered, peaceful, productive world in which we try not to kill each other too much, give each other enough to eat most of the time, and ensure heat and shelter for those that are cold and homeless.

Of course, I won't stop celebrating. I have a little one to make Christmas for, so she can make Christmas for her own children someday, and a wife that enjoys it as much as she does (if not more), and a 20-year-old son that still shares my belief in Santa. Those things are too special to let go because Madison Avenue and Wall Street persist in their progressive cheapening of the season.

This cheapening is collective, BTW, we are doing this together as a herd, and share responsibility for the frenetic madness as much as those accelerating it.

[1]
Setting aside for the moment whether it's right or wrong, we also respond this way to spiritualism and religion. It's "grown up" to be a skeptic or an atheist, to wear your wordily wounds like a badge of honor. But we needn't take sides on this to mourn the loss of our childlike attachment to elevated ideals exemplified by elevated personalities. Should I perish one day with such a simple faith, I can't help but think it will make the trip out of this world a little more tolerable.