Thanksgiving has come and gone, little more than a blink of
the eye in another year of our lives. It seems like only yesterday I was
bubbling with excitement at the thought of a five-day vacation and a dining
room table overflowing with food (full disclosure: I don’t even like turkey
that much, but for some reason, every year I find myself salivating over the
mental image of a plump, dead bird glistening with fat and oil). Now, that’s
over. We can breathe a sigh of relief that we’re finally free of our
exasperating, idiosyncratic and otherwise unbearable relatives and heave a sigh
of dejection that this brief escape from work, school and stress has come to an
end.
I can’t believe this is on my YouTube search history,
but what the actual hell.
If Black Friday is the personification of American consumerism
run rampant (something tells me that Tyler Durden would disapprove, though he’d
also probably see this as a perfect occasion for violent mischief-making), then
Christmas embodies modern society’s rather disconcerting obsession with
innocence. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against children being children,
and I enjoy the escapism that the holiday provides as much as the next person.
But when Santa Claus, a mythical, bearded toy-maker who lives at the North Pole
with a bunch of elves and reindeer, is being treated like some angelic superhero,
it starts to seem a little preposterous.
Case in
point: This episode of Glee. I know I’ve ragged on Ryan
Murphy’s landmark musical-melodrama numerous times on this blog; to be fair,
after spending a full year in a proverbial rehab clinic (method of therapy:
avoidance), my attitude toward the show has shifted from vehement outrage to slightly
contemptuous bitterness (I no longer have to suppress the driving urge to punch
someone in the face whenever I hear the word “glee”). But in this case, it is
semi-relevant to what I what to talk about, so why not?
For those
of you fortunate and/or wise enough to not have wasted an hour of your lives
watching this atrocity of a Christmas special, I’ll give you a brief summary.
Basically, one of the storylines in the episode involves the revelation that
Brittney, a blond (duh) cheerleader who seems to have the IQ of a rock, still
believes in Santa. Did I mention that she’s in high school? Besides the fact that any teenager who genuinely
thinks that Santa exists probably (a) hasn’t made it passed elementary school
and (b) has shitty parents, what makes this plot truly problematic is the fact
that the rest of the glee club spends the entire episode trying to help
perpetrate her childish fantasy. That’s right: instead of treating Brittney
like the almost-adult she supposedly is and telling her the truth, they do
everything they can to convince her that Santa
is real. You probably think I’m taking it all too seriously, that maybe
this episode is supposed to be a biting satire of… something, but that’s the
problem: unless my tone detector is badly malfunctioning, I’m pretty sure that
the show is being completely and tragically sincere. For an alleged dark
comedy, Glee has never been
particularly adept at irony; even during its respectable first season, it
treaded a dangerous line between earnest and maudlin. That the show and its
characters are so eager to infantilize Brittany, treating her ignorance like an
endearing, even enviable quirk, is troubling on many levels.
I
suppose, in a way, that episode reflects modern society’s treatment of
Christmas and children in general. Christmas is far from a novel tradition
(according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, people have been celebrating it since the Roman Empire),
but it seems that only recently has it been so blatantly tailored toward
children. Whereas it originated as a profoundly religious festival
commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, the holiday has since evolved into a
largely secular occasion on which people hand each other presents for no
particular reason other than because it’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s one
of the few days a year when children can act like spoiled brats and get away
with it; in fact, it’s practically encouraged.
Department stores hire people to spend days doing nothing but sit and listen to
kids demand ridiculous gifts, and the lengths that parents go to in order to
perpetuate the myth of Santa sometimes border on absurd (it’s like they don’t want to be thanked). There even exist movies whose entire premise
revolves
around the importance of
believing in Santa Claus.
Hey, Target, you couldn’t have at least waited until after
Halloween?
But I’ve never fully understood the obsession with Santa and
the so-called “Christmas spirit”. On one hand, I get that Santa is a symbol of
innocence, the belief that magic exists, etcetera, etcetera, but on the other
hand… why? Does not believing in Santa and flying reindeer actually deprive
anyone of the wonder of Christmas – nay, of life? I can barely remember a time
when I thought Santa was real, but I’ve never considered myself an especially
cynical or mature person. Yet whenever an adult reveals to a child that Santa
is a hoax, people react as though a heinous crime has been committed. Why do we
care so much about protecting children’s innocence in the first place? Someone exposed
to a rated-R movie at a young age won’t automatically turn into a paranoid
lunatic (as some people I know will probably attest, it might cause a tiny amount
of permanent psychological damage, but isn’t that a part of life?). Profanity
isn’t toxic; if anything, adults nowadays seem more sensitive to it than children.
And sex is a biological process essential to the ongoing survival of the human
species. You don’t have to rub kids’ faces in shit, to quote Laura Linney in
Kenneth Lonergan’s wonderful film You Can
Count on Me, but at the same time, growing up isn’t the end of the world.
Maybe that’s
just me. Maybe I’m an insensitive Grinch who’s spoiling the fun for everyone
else. After all, Santa apparently makes lots of kids happy, so who am I to
condemn him? On a personal level, though, I actually think that not believing
in Santa has made me enjoy Christmas more. As much as I like presents and all
that jazz, that’s not why I look forward to this time of year. What I really
love about Christmas – and winter in general – is the imagery: the trees
blanketed with newly fallen snow, the aroma of hot chocolate in a steaming mug,
the warm crackle of flames in the hearth, the glow of Christmas tree lights in house
windows. There’s something surreal, even fairytale-like about it, this one day
when you’re allowed to really appreciate – really feel – things. Maybe that’s why Christmas is, at its core,
bittersweet: it’s the perfect intersection between past, present and future. Even
as you lose yourself in the euphoria of the moment, the joy of being surrounded
by wrapping paper and family, and indulge in rose-tinted memories of your
childhood, part of you knows this won’t last forever, because in six days, the
year is going to end, and you’ll be just that much older…
Merry month-early Christmas, everyone.
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