Americans Don’t Deserve Christmas in 2019
I love me some ChristmasTime. I love the smells. I love the presents. I love the fucking cheerful, goddamned Good Will to Men, Hark the Herald Angels, Joy to the World, Holly Jolly Fucking Christmas of it all. I love egg nog and fruit cake and shiny lights and all the excessive colored shit associated with it (is it any wonder I moved to Las Vegas which looks nothing less than a city designed to look like it was decorated by my mother at Christmas?)
I love the stories of mistakes made and redemption afforded. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It’s a Wonderful Life. A Christmas Carol. Bad Santa. Miracle on 34th Street. Stories that make one believe in the power of forgiveness and rehabilitation and the essential goodness of humans in the face of horrors and greed.
As I was writing my piece for the upcoming December BUGHOUSE! (George Bailey: A Wonderful Life or a Miserable Failure?) it hit me like a bag full of soot: Americans don’t believe in these stories right now. In 2019, we are more attuned to Punishment over Rehabilitation, Revenge instead of Redemption. We neither Forgive Nor Forget. In the Woke and Alt Right Worlds, there is no transgression that can be pardoned, no mistake made in the past worthy of absolution.
In the new paradigm (based upon the social media maelstroms proliferated by the most vocal online) the Grinch was a bad character and no return of trees, candies, or hams is going to change that. Given that his heart cannot be verified as having grown three sizes, his conversion to a lover of Christmas means fuckall. He was and will always be a Grinch and his past crimes cannot be washed clean unless he is completely cancelled and he is eliminated from the societal equation.
Ebenezer Scrooge was a foul, cranky, skin-flint who built his chains around him. The Woke and The Red dictate that Marley’s and the Three Ghosts of Christmas visits mean nothing at all because there is no amount of restitution the old man can do to eradicate those chains. Christ, his emails and Vince Foster. Holy Shit, the slum conditions he created.
George Bailey, a sexist, passively racist, sexual assaulter with some of the poorest business skills on display imaginable is no longer allowed to have a wonderful life because his many friends will wake up to a Twitter cascade of public shame and calls for them all to be jobless on Christmas Day.
More and more, I want less and less to do with the self righteous extremes of our highly contentious partisan divide. I believe fundamentally in the power of redemption and these Christmas stories have to mean something or we’re all fucked. Without some semblance of forgiveness, only the most pure and untouched by mistakes or erroneous ideologies or micro-aggressions avoid doom and I’m almost 100% certain that there is no one out there who fits that specific bill of goods.
I love Christmas. Christmas is my wife spraying our fake Vegas tree with pine-scented stuff with a look of glee on her face. It’s convincing my highly frugal boss to buy some trees and decorations for the casino, putting them up, and the staff supplement with their own items. It’s the memories of countless Christmas holidays in Kansas with my family — gingerbread house-making, telling stories, my one night in a church, our matching pajamas mom gets us. And watching these movies of redemption and love and joy to the fucking world, la-la-la-la-la la-la-la-lah.
So do yourself a favor. Go watch George C. Scott in 1984’s A Christmas Carol and pretend that Scrooge is just another name for Trump. Watch Four Christmas’s and see your own family in that mess. Put on Christmas Vacation and wonder who in your family is Cousin Eddie. Watch Elf and just giggle like a fucking loon and don’t get all bent out of shape as Will Farrell and Zoe Deschanel sing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
Lighten the fuck up already. It’s Christmas.
