FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
CHRISTMAS IS NO CRIME
by Nick DevlinMerry Christmas.
There, I said it.
Before They come for me, and it shouldn't be more than a few minutes, let me share a small parable of festive woe. It's called "How the Grinch Stole a Religiously Non-specific Seasonal Celebration."
It began with the pre-apocalyptic vision of the checkout girl at the supermarket choking back the beginnings of the word "merry," as if a repulsive racial slur were about to roll errantly off her lips, then stumbling earnestly forward through the corporately ordained "Have a Happy Festive Season."
Everywhere around us the word "Christmas" is being cleansed from the palette of our language, wiped unceremoniously away like a grease stain from the glistening arborite of our antiseptic cultural kitchen.
So I use it whenever I can, leaving a cookie-crumb trail of linguistic sedition.
Fittingly, the coup de grace of my ecumenism was delivered digitally, by the friendly, friendly voice-mail server of an ignominiously nameless major corporation. "We would like to extend our warmest wishes to those of our customers who are celebrating holidays at this time of year."
Press "one" to gag. Press "two" for indignation. Press "three" to swear I'll never do business with these disingenuous bastards ever again.
When did uttering the word "Christmas" become a hate crime? Every time I do it I fear that Dutch paratroopers will burst into my apartment, throw a can or two of tear gas, and drag me off in handcuffs to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
"Next case: The People vs. Nick Devlin. The charge is uttering a Eurocentric seasonal epithet."
Me wishing someone Merry Christmas has all the religious overtones of a United Church homily.
If our society were to become any more secular, we'd have to prostrate ourselves five times daily before our outlaid Interac cards, quietly chanting "emptor ergo sum - I shop therefore I am." Gazing upon the hordes of mall warriors, are we to believe they are but throngs of God-fearing Christians shopping in celebration of their saviour's birth? I think not. I'd venture to say there are a few less-than-devout amongst the parents elbowing for the Tickle-me-Elmo dolls.
We've managed to subsume and absorb the wholly offensive aspects of the secularized holiday - the shopping, the crowds, the clerical rudeness, the 18.5-per-cent interest.
And yet somehow we've lost the good. We used to believe in God and love and miracles. Now we just buy shit.
Christmas is more than just an obsolete Judeo-Christian holiday. Even an atheist can appreciate Christmas is about the idea that something good and blessed may once have come into this world, and may yet again. It's a celebration of birth and life; of thanks to things beyond our understanding; a moment of honest awe and appreciation in the midst of our madly over-caffeinized lives.
And we call it Christmas. We call it that out of respect for the people who built this peaceful and prosperous nation, and who made it a place where you can choose not to celebrate Christmas, without suffering persecution for your beliefs.
So have a very, very, merry... whatever.
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