Barbie
12-17-2003, 07:43 PM
Written last year this time...still appropriate...perhaps.
A little Canadian skew...
Merry Christmas (http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex20021211.html)
December 11, 2002
It's ancient history now, but I can remember a time when there was a movement to put "Christ" back in Christmas. That battle's forgotten. We reached a more modern stage now: trying to keep "Christmas" in Christmas.
Christmas is a moveable feast in more ways than one. The season that feeds off such diverse channels as the early gospel stories, O Henry and Charles Dickens – especially Dickens, A Christmas Carol is the founding story of the "modern" Christmas – and then there are the cards, the carols, ancient and modern. There is Hollywood – Bing Crosby movies, Alistar Simms, the one with the Macy's Santa Claus. There's that wretched drummer boy song, may its composer be throttled. Johnny Mathis, Anne Murray specials. Hundreds of choirs. And of course there is Christmas shopping.
Finally, let us not forget Mr. Claus – the great Santa – everyone from Jim Varney to Coca-Cola and a million Canadian tire store commercials has had Santa for the universal emblem. And the elves and reindeers. The tree and its lights. Christmas is a wilderness of emblems.
But there is one other layer of Christmas that is as important as all these. Every family's memory, of those families that celebrate Christmas (and they are millions), of their family Christmas. It's wound into people's lives.
The essence of Christmas is its sentiment. However thinly or fervently we approach the season, those who celebrate it, distinguish it from all other holidays or party days or long weekends, by a sentiment of trying to be cheerful in a bleak world, wishing their fellow beings good will, helping when possible those less fortunate – if Christmas did not exist except for the Salvation Army, it would be worth keeping on the calendar.
I suppose what I'm saying is that it's the least vicious time of the year – the one time when secularists and religionists agree to try, and try consciously, to live out the spirit of benevolence, wishing their fellow beings well, and actually trying to mean it.
But, we are in the age of political correctness and every Christmas, as sure as there is the patter of reindeer hooves on the rooftop, there will be some dry and forced controversy on whether "Merry Christmas" is offensive, on whether the Christmas tree should be called the holiday tree. (Toronto city council spent their energies on this fatuous debate recently. Toronto city council once banned the Barenaked Ladies because their name was "sexist" – enough said.)
It's a Christmas tree again and even as I speak the Royal Canadian Mint is shilling its greatly deflated coins in a commercial that speaks of the "12 days of giving." Evidently "12 days of Christmas" to plug the sale of their coins during Christmas for people who might buy them during Christmas as Christmas presents is too "hot" for the Royal Canadian Mint. "Christmas" might be offensive. What a wonderfully diverse, sensitive, culturally tolerant bunch we have at the Royal Mint. They want your Christmas money, but they don't want Christmas in their ads.
Christmas is at least as much a Canadian tradition as any other Canadian tradition. From the trenches of the First World War where fighting stopped for Christmas to the latest damn GAP ad, Christmas is, in all its diverse and benign and mixed manifestations, one of the kindest, longest, richest, most benevolent traditions we have.
So in the name of cultural diversity it deserves as much respect as any other. Respect for tradition does not involve emasculating the most popular ones – at least as much, by the way, as the "Royal" in Royal Canadian Mint. If they want to peddle their hardware during Christmas, the Mint should be obliged to at least pay respect to the tradition they are so keen on exploiting.
Merry Christmas, Mint.
For The National, I'm Rex Murphy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aside from Mike and Kristine, I don't have any family left.
This time of year means time off work. Really good food, great parties for the end of year/new years, chocolate (but that's for every day, no?), and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on CBC.
A little Canadian skew...
Merry Christmas (http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex20021211.html)
December 11, 2002
It's ancient history now, but I can remember a time when there was a movement to put "Christ" back in Christmas. That battle's forgotten. We reached a more modern stage now: trying to keep "Christmas" in Christmas.
Christmas is a moveable feast in more ways than one. The season that feeds off such diverse channels as the early gospel stories, O Henry and Charles Dickens – especially Dickens, A Christmas Carol is the founding story of the "modern" Christmas – and then there are the cards, the carols, ancient and modern. There is Hollywood – Bing Crosby movies, Alistar Simms, the one with the Macy's Santa Claus. There's that wretched drummer boy song, may its composer be throttled. Johnny Mathis, Anne Murray specials. Hundreds of choirs. And of course there is Christmas shopping.
Finally, let us not forget Mr. Claus – the great Santa – everyone from Jim Varney to Coca-Cola and a million Canadian tire store commercials has had Santa for the universal emblem. And the elves and reindeers. The tree and its lights. Christmas is a wilderness of emblems.
But there is one other layer of Christmas that is as important as all these. Every family's memory, of those families that celebrate Christmas (and they are millions), of their family Christmas. It's wound into people's lives.
The essence of Christmas is its sentiment. However thinly or fervently we approach the season, those who celebrate it, distinguish it from all other holidays or party days or long weekends, by a sentiment of trying to be cheerful in a bleak world, wishing their fellow beings good will, helping when possible those less fortunate – if Christmas did not exist except for the Salvation Army, it would be worth keeping on the calendar.
I suppose what I'm saying is that it's the least vicious time of the year – the one time when secularists and religionists agree to try, and try consciously, to live out the spirit of benevolence, wishing their fellow beings well, and actually trying to mean it.
But, we are in the age of political correctness and every Christmas, as sure as there is the patter of reindeer hooves on the rooftop, there will be some dry and forced controversy on whether "Merry Christmas" is offensive, on whether the Christmas tree should be called the holiday tree. (Toronto city council spent their energies on this fatuous debate recently. Toronto city council once banned the Barenaked Ladies because their name was "sexist" – enough said.)
It's a Christmas tree again and even as I speak the Royal Canadian Mint is shilling its greatly deflated coins in a commercial that speaks of the "12 days of giving." Evidently "12 days of Christmas" to plug the sale of their coins during Christmas for people who might buy them during Christmas as Christmas presents is too "hot" for the Royal Canadian Mint. "Christmas" might be offensive. What a wonderfully diverse, sensitive, culturally tolerant bunch we have at the Royal Mint. They want your Christmas money, but they don't want Christmas in their ads.
Christmas is at least as much a Canadian tradition as any other Canadian tradition. From the trenches of the First World War where fighting stopped for Christmas to the latest damn GAP ad, Christmas is, in all its diverse and benign and mixed manifestations, one of the kindest, longest, richest, most benevolent traditions we have.
So in the name of cultural diversity it deserves as much respect as any other. Respect for tradition does not involve emasculating the most popular ones – at least as much, by the way, as the "Royal" in Royal Canadian Mint. If they want to peddle their hardware during Christmas, the Mint should be obliged to at least pay respect to the tradition they are so keen on exploiting.
Merry Christmas, Mint.
For The National, I'm Rex Murphy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aside from Mike and Kristine, I don't have any family left.
This time of year means time off work. Really good food, great parties for the end of year/new years, chocolate (but that's for every day, no?), and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on CBC.