Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Historically, Christmas is one of my least-favorite holidays. This year, however, I am trying to gin up some hope with a little Christmas cheer.

Why? Because I think we need the break, for one thing. There are a lot of poor people suffering immeasurably this year due to the Bush recession. Anything that would give them a break and a boost would be a good thing.

Then, if the so-called “Christmas spirit” could do anything to end the partisan hostilities left over from the trauma of the Bush years, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas indeed.

Lest this curmudgeonly, Scrooge-like attitude about Christmas come as a shock to the hordes of new readers here, let me do a little word riff to explain.

Let me just say that if I was like Elvis, that is to say richer and more popular than god, I would blast the TV set every time I hear some talking head go on and on about “the true meaning of Christmas,” or go after ratings by trying to start up another fight over the “attack on Christmas” by “liberals.”

I quit even checking in on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News a long time ago, in part because of his fake, cynical strategy of attracting conservative viewers by blatantly distorting the Supreme Court’s rulings upholding the separation of church and state about nativity scenes on public property.

One of my favorite film depictions of this divide in America comes in Charlie Wilson’s War. Remember when Tom Hanks suggests to his constituent from Texas that moving the nativity scene from the firehouse to the church down the street would be the best solution where everybody wins?

Here in Alabama, you may recall, we fought a monumental battle over a very similar thing a few year’s back. Remember Judge Roy Moore and his granite carving of the Ten Commandments?

Well, I hate to bring it back up now that former Judge Moore is running for governor, again. But if you ever get down to Montgomery and visit the Supreme Court building on Dexter Avenue, you will notice there is no monument to the Ten Commandments in the lobby. And that, I contend, is a very good thing.

For a reminder of the real meaning of the word Christmas, let’s turn to Wikipedia.

The word Christmas originated as a compound meaning “Christ’s Mass.” It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. “Cristes” is from Greek Christos and “mæsse” is from Latin missa (the holy mass).

The date of commemoration is not known to be Jesus’ actual birthday, and may have initially been chosen to correspond with either the day nine months after some early Christians believed Jesus had been conceived. Of course it was also a historical Roman festival and coincides with the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere.

In Christianity, Christmas is the festival celebrating the Nativity of Jesus, the belief that the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament’s Messianic prophecies was born to the Virgin Mary.

Now for the understatement of what Christmas has become.

Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians, “the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses,” according to the online encyclopedia. “The economic impact of Christmas is a factor that has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world.”

Let’s just come right out and say it. Christmas has evolved from a pagan celebration of the winter solstice to a Christian holiday into a Capitalist shopping fest that props up a huge chunk of the national economy each year.

True, Christmas has for many centuries been a time for the giving and exchanging of gifts. A number of figures of both Christian and mythical origin have been associated with Christmas, among them Father Christmas, also known as Santa Claus, and Father Frost. The name Santa Claus is a corruption of the Dutch Sinterklaas, which means simply Saint Nicholas.

Some Christians bemoan the bastardization of the “true meaning” of the holiday, but most of them go right on putting up their Christmas trees and pretending there is a Santa Claus and mixing Paganism and Capitalism with Christianity as if it were the natural state of things.

This may be why a number of members of my generation, the Baby Boomers, tended to have a problem with the holiday, although most of them gave up fighting it once they got married and had kids. I mean, what else are you going to do this time of year if not get together with your family and unwrap presents from under a Christmas tree? There are plenty of church-related activities this time of year too.

But what are all the intellectual followers of Darwin supposed to do?

Only one year in my life so far, in the year 2000 right before we found out who the next president was going to be, I figured out a way to escape both the Christian and the Capitalist versions of Christmas. Where? How?

I went down to Cuba for a few days. The Socialist country is by and large atheist, although just a few years before that trip, they had allowed the Pope to visit — and some people had started celebrating Christmas in a few re-opened churches.

This year, after eight years of living under the regime of king wannabe George W. Bush — who mixed up Christianity and Capitalism like no U.S. president before him — I will take more pleasure than I have in a long time in giving a few presents to members of my family and a few friends. Most of my family voted for Bush, twice, and seemed to have no realization that anything was wrong, then. Although they sort of woke up about the time that global recession hit.

Nor have they ever expressed any misgivings with the way we celebrate Christmas. Like most Americans, I guess, they don’t recognize the contradiction of celebrating both the life of a child they swear is the real messiah and a rotund fictional character in a red and white suit. To me, it’s about as silly as celebrating with a chocolate bunny on the holiday set aside to honor Christ’s alleged resurrection from the dead.

This year, however, I am setting aside my cynicism and saying what the heck.

Perhaps my mood has been affected by the winning ways of some more guys in red and white suits.

What will be the gift that keeps on giving this year? How would you like an autographed copy of the picture of Nick Saban winking after Alabama’s Mark Ingram won the Heisman Trophy?

Now all we need to complete the new year celebration is a national championship win over Texas in Pasadena on January 7.

For me, at least, a victory there would be sweet revenge over the home state of the Bushes, that ruling family that has wreaked so much havoc with our way of life and done its best to change America from a democracy into a monarchy.

Now, since this is the first Christmas in American history with a black family in the White House, perhaps we can begin to move on from our tragic past. That is my Christmas hope anyway.

Now if we could just get a workable health reform bill passed and a climate change deal out of Copenhagen, I might well be convinced the world is on the right track once again.

Unfortunately, the health bill looks like a mandate with no public option, and there are still many details to work out with the nations of the world to begin tackling the biggest problem we face on this planet, the scourge of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Then, the Obama administration and this country are not going to be on the true path to success through excellence until we straighten out the partisanship in the justice system and break up the telecommunications monopolies.

All that just means there is much work ahead.

But for now — for the next few days — can’t we just take a break from the blogging wars, the e-mail fights and the Facebook arguments and set aside our political and other differences to celebrate Christmas? This is my hope and prayer.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Under the Microscope III. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.