I'll be your straw man

Ever since Bill O'Reilly announced that he was the only one out there "defending Christmas" the holiday media have been dominated by two memes: conservatives claiming that Christmas is under attack from secularists forcing people to say "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas"; and liberals insisting that no one is attacking Christmas, and that conservatives are creating another liberal boogie to perpetuate the idea that they are somehow oppressed.

As I mentioned in the comments on Echidne, all of this makes it very difficult to what I want to do most this time of year: attack Christmas. My deep need to attack Christmas has been simmering for the past week, as I conduct my rounds of Midwest holiday visits, so I really, really need right now to list all the aspects of Christmas that I wish to see annihilated by any means necessary, Christian sensitivities be damned.

1. The phrase "Merry Christmas"

2. "The Little Drummer Boy"

3. Suicide.

4. Relatives who hold their holiday gathering every year at the same time
grades are due, and then get mad at me because I don't come.

5. The fact that social niceties led me to go to a Christian church this Christmas eve, and Christian churches make me very, very antsy.

Like any human institution, Christianity has positive and negative aspects. Nevertheless, overt displays of Christianity can make me anxious in a way that no other display of religion can. It is a visceral, irrational response.

6. " Oh little town of Bethlehem"

7. The contemporary Christian rock version of "the little drummer boy" I
heard in the diner the other day.

Most of the things that I loathe about Christmas are carol related. This is odd, because normally my aversion to Christianity is suspended when it comes to music: I dig Mahalia Jackson, shaped note singing, Bach, etc. If one were to read me uncharitably, one might think that I only liked the Christian music it was ok for hipsters to like, but when confronted with the honest expression of worship from ordinary people, I turn up my nose. The way I read me, though, what is really at work is aesthetic detachment. When Christian ideas come from other places and times, I can take what I like of it and leave the rest. When Christianity comes from my own culture, I feel pressure, like I’m supposed to buy this whole hog, and if I don’t there is something wrong with me.

8. The fact that my daughter is exposed to Christianity a lot this time of year.

I develop this irrational feeling that she has gotten some Jesus on her, and I should wipe it off. Its irrational, because I don’t believe that Jesus is necessarily bad for you. I am certain that the good aspects of Christianity have actually made bad people better. Still, I have to admit that I don’t want my daughter to be a Christian. This can be very problematic socially, because my wife’s family are Christians of various stripes (United Church of Christ & Quaker). We occasionally find ourselves around God-related toys, and I always have to find a way to steer Caroline away from them without announcing “I’m not really one of you.”

9. The sermon I heard today, about how we all come with “some assembly required”
and only God can help us put the pieces together.

Contemporary Christianity begins with what Buddhists call the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. Life is full of suffering. I feel this truth quite strongly, and am always suspicious of people who don’t. The question is how to respond to this suffering. Buddhism offers a diagnosis of this suffering that makes sense. The second noble truth is that suffering comes from desire, and the cure for suffering is the release of desire. Christianity (like all the Western monotheisms) takes the opposite route. Suffering is not caused by desire, but by having the wrong object of desire. The only object of desire that can relieve your suffering is God. Thus a god is posited that can satisfy all desire. Such a god would have to be infinite, paradoxical, and in the end, unbelievable.

10. The phrase “happy holidays”

It’s just like “merry Christmas,” only more insipid.

I know this list is going to offend some. Suicide is an important holiday tradition for Americans. There is really no good reason why I should call on the annihilation of a sermon that no one was making me hear, and is perfectly protected speech under principles that I myself hold dear. Whatever. My real point was put best by PK "We must stop christmas from coming." We failed this season, but maybe next year.

Well, I could go on, and I probably will at some point, but I should also mention one aspect of Christmas normally targeted for death by grinches like me, that I want to see spared in the upcoming Christmas holocaust:

"Its a Wonderful Life"

Why spare "Its a Wonderful Life"? Because while I was in college I had an alcohol-fueled religious experience watching it. At the time T.V. stations were in the habit of really pushing the Frank Capra classic. That Christmas eve easily half of the stations on my parent's cable system were running it. My parents had gone to bed, but I couldn't sleep, so I started drinking beer and surfing the various broadcasts of Jimmy Stewart's brush with suicidal depression. I quickly discovered that the different stations were not quite in synch, and that if you flipped the channels just right, you could watch the same sequence over and over again. At around my fifth beer, I managed to watch the Zuzu’s petals sequence for a good fifteen minutes “Zuzu’s petals!” “Zuzu’s petals!” “Zuzu’s petals!” This led me to achieve mystical union with … well with something.