Frankly, I’m ready to give up Christmas. It has become so
blatantly phony, so crassly commercial, so far in spirit from
everything it is said to mean that each year it becomes more
difficult for the romantic to rise above the cynic.
Such Christmas music. “Let Christmas light your happy
heart, let G.E. light your tree.” Or, “Deck the boughs with
Black & Decker.”
We need a new Dickens to snort ‘humbug’, a new
Scrooge to tighten the fist on such disgusting distortions. We
need an Anti-Christmas Party, and when I’m king I’ll start
one.
It will have a number of simple rules:
- S. Clause, who somehow escaped prosecution by Mr.
Basford although he is clearly guilty of the most
misleading advertising, will be shot on sight if he
appears before December 21. In fact, we’ll pay a
handsome bounty on each set of long white whiskers.
- Ho-ho-horrible radio announcers will automatically
lose their jobs if they start playing carols before
December 21, or playing synthetic carols ever.
- Nobody will be allowed to spend more than $5.00 on
a present for anybody. But everybody will be
required to spend five hours thinking about the
particular sort of gift that will suit a particular sort of
person.
- Everyone who spends time, thought and affection
making a gift for someone will get an income tax
rebate.
- Everyone who declines to buy chocolates for their
overfed family or new skis for the child whose last
year's skis are better than the world champion used
10 years ago, but instead gives the money to those
who need it, will get a medal.
The Anti-Christmas Party began to evolve, I suppose,
almost 20 years ago. Doting grandparents had sent piles of
presents for the first child, and there was some family debate
which things to give him.
Because, after all, if the Christmas picture showed him
hugging presents from Grandparents A, what would
Grandparents B think?
So we carefully arranged them all under the Christmas
tree then let him crawl through the open door. In he came, a
little bewildered, eyed the piles of unfamiliar toys, then headed
behind the nearest chair and picked up an empty beer bottle.
Played with it for hours.
No, he didn't become a heavy drinker. But he took off in
September, with less money than most families spend on
Christmas presents, to see how the other half lives. He'll be in
Morocco for Christmas. When he sees how that part of the
other half lives, he'll probably be a charter member of my new
anti-party when he comes back.
Most of the early members will be those who have visited
the poorer countries, I expect. I've never been able to enjoy a
wallowing Christmas since I've seen the poor in Hong Kong,
on the back roads of Greece, or the devastated in Peru.
Or even the huge family in the Burns Lake country, years
ago, that had triplets for Christmas, and wound up with about
16 people in one log cabin.
The way one little girl’s eyes grew wide in wonder when
I gave her one doll will never fade from my mind.
Meantime, back under the Christmas commercial
avalanche... It’s great for the economy, I suppose. Provides
jobs for people who would otherwise have a lean time.
All this makes it easy to see what I want for Christmas. In
a word, Christmas. Defining it is no easy task, and it’s easier
to start with what it's not.
It’s not electronics screaming at me to buy more of
everything to give to people who already have more than 90
percent of the rest of the world has.
It’s not spending a small fortune on elaborate greeting
cards for people I may be able to make a better business deal
with next year.
It’s not seeing children brainwashed with the idea that if
they don't buy something that costs more money than they
have, then they haven’t given a present of the sort society
expects.
Nor is it putting up hundreds of dollars of coloured
electric lights in November so that others can take a bus tour
past your house to see that you spend more on this than the
neighbours do.
It isn’t for me, even going to church on Christmas Day
and taking part in a formal ritual.
And it certainly isn’t spending so much on presents for all
that I have to go to the bank to pay the January bills.
It’s really a sell out from the whirl of life in which to sit
down with family and friends and try to see what we’ve done
and how we’re doing, in relation to the idea of Christianity
and fellowship that started it all.
It’s best done in peace and quiet and honesty, which
makes it very difficult.
For then we realize but how much farther we have to go
before we give real meaning to all those glowing, glossy
sentiments we so glibly sign on our Christmas cards.
Instead of a Merry Christmas, then, I’m going to wish you
a quiet, thoughtful Christmas in which you let your thoughts
roam freely, spurring you to do things you've meant to do for
years but didn’t do.