 | The War on Christmas Carols |
Why does the Four Points Sheraton in Chicago hate Christmas? The hotel is blatantly taking part in the commercial War Against Christmas that has brought the beloved holiday close to nearly under threat of a potential partial cancellation.
Walk into the hotel and you will hear what I hear - the anti-Christmas playing of Christmas carols. The Little Drummer Boy, O Come All Ye Faithful, and O Little Town of Bethlehem - you’ll hear them all playing in the hotels decked halls.
And why? Why? Well, because it’s not even close to being the Christmas season yet, but the Christmas carols have been playing practically since Halloween. Clearly, the people in charge of the hotel are trying to spread their heresy: That Jesus was not born on the 25th of December, but had a birthday extending from November 1st through December 25th.
Just as orthodox Christian theology holds that Mary miraculously gave birth to Jesus without ever having sex, the Four Points heresy suggests that Mary was in a miracle of childbirth for almost two months straight, with Christmas extending for weeks on end, beginning even before Thanksgiving.
Call hotel management now and demand that this War Against Christmas stop now!
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We’re seeing, this year especially, how unsustainable this frivolous commercial holiday actually is - people are broke, losing assets, losing jobs, losing their pensions - and the old “happy holiday” music blaring from the media and the stores are tolling for a lost past. The country has long been on a lifestyle binge that equated “stuff” with wealth and now we see just how empty it all is. An awful lot is going to have to change in order for our culture, and that of the world too, to come back to some semblance of reality. Corporations and the super-wealthy few are going to have to relinquish their greed-based policies and truly spread the wealth around or civilization won’t work for any of us. Changes are going to have to be made in health care (for everyone - no exceptions), education, wages, food production and distribution, the oceans and our relation to them, water rights and access, and lifestyle changes will need to be amended to conform to what the environment can reasonably sustain. Some, like Derrick Jensen, espouse that we’re already in unsustainable mode and that civilization is crashing NOW as a result.
I’m not sure if civilization is crashing, but the expected reduction in consumer spending this Christmas season is certainly going to deepen the recession. I don’t agree that the issue is equating “stuff” with “wealth” but equating “stuff” with “obligation”, and I’d be delighted to see that particular custom fade. Last year I suggested that our extended family give charitable contributions instead of gifts to the adults; that only sorta worked, but I got ‘em to think about it, and this year we’ve decided not to exchange at all between adults (and yes, I do plan to send the savings to my favorite charities).
But I wouldn’t take potshots at retail establishments, which often live or die by Christmas sales, for trying to encourage spending. It never struck me as a particularly sustainable scheme in the long term, but they do have shareholders to consider.