John Parise was asking for trouble. For five days, the Long Island DJ urged his listeners not to miss the “very big” announcement on his morning talk show. He told them to make sure the kids are listening. Then he dropped his bomb.
He told them there is no Santa Claus. Told them their parents buy all the toys. Told them the proof was hidden in the closets and the attic.
In seconds, the station was flooded with hundreds of angry calls and emails. “This guy’s the DJ who stole Christmas,” one Dad said. “It’s just cruel,” added Mom. Station managers called it “a big mistake,” and apologized, but the DJ defended his action.
What could he have been thinking? He said he was taking stand against the “commercialization” of Christmas: “Christmas has gotten as far way as possible from what Christmas is about. Christmas is doing for others, helping others.”
Well, yes and no. That is, yes, Christmas is about something more than “who has the best sales,” and “making sure your kid has the hottest toy on the block.” And yes, that something more does—indirectly, anyway—entail helping others. But no, that is not “what Christmas is all about.”
It’s really much simpler, much more concrete, and much more obvious than all that. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. So explaining the “true meaning of Christmas” to kids is not that complicated—at least, it shouldn’t be.
We do, of course, have holidays that are about some general social ideals, like gratitude and generosity (Thanksgiving), or patriotic sacrifice (Memorial Day), or the dignity of work (Labor Day)—but Christmas is not that kind of holiday. No, Christmas is more like Martin Luther King Day—a holiday marking a great man’s birth. Remember, Christmas means “Christ’s Mass”—the day when the mass of the day is in honor of the birth of “Christ.” That’s because Catholics, along with other Christians, believe Jesus to be the Christ—the Messiah. But even non-Christians can understand honoring the birth of the man whose influence has changed the world more than anyone else.
We always told our kids that Santa was the “fun, make believe” part of Christmas, and that Jesus is the real part. They knew that the tree, the ornaments, the carols, the presents, the annual reading of “The Night Before Christmas” and the stockings were all designed to make Jesus’ birthday party the biggest and best party of the year.
We always celebrated Advent during Advent, and Christmas during Christmas. Right after Thanksgiving we’d search the local woods for the perfect dead bough to make our Jesse Tree. At dinner we’d light the Advent Wreath, impatient for the night when we’d finally light enough candles to eat by candlelight. Meanwhile we added ornaments to the Jesse tree, already painted wintry white but gradually growing less bare and more colorful as Christmas approached.
It helped that our kids’ bi-lingual school was full of Hispanic kids whose families celebrated the Twelve Days of the Christmas season, all the way to the “Feast of the Three Kings” on January 6. It was a family joke that most people who sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” never actually celebrate them—or even know when they are! We’re empty-nesters now, but to this day my kids expect our tree to go up just before Christmas day and stay up through the whole season—and they still scoff at the sight of trees in the trash on December 27 or 28. I sometimes joke that our family Christmas customs are the one piece of Catholic identity our kids hang on to.
Back then, we were like John Parise—we were opposing the “commercialization” of Christmas too. Twenty-five years later, that outlook seems rather quaint to me. Now I don’t worry about commercialism spoiling Christmas. I worry about Christmas being replaced by something else—a generic time of year called the “Holiday Season.” Seems to me, this “Holiday Season” has taken on a life of its own, quite independent of any “holyday.” It runs all autumn long now, and peaks with a month-long buying spree that ends on December 25—the very day when the Christian Christmas season starts!
So the stores start selling “holiday” costumes and decorations at summer’s end, and more and more people set out orange holiday lights and ghoulish lawn decorations in anticipation of Halloween. By mid-October, Christmas stuff goes on display, competing with Halloween stuff. Once the Trick-or-Treating ends, the real selling starts, and from then till year’s end people buy nearly 50% of all the retail goods sold all year, including more than 80% of toys and personal entertainment products, and nearly 90% of all jewelry.
This is no longer about exploiting a Christian holiday to make a little extra money. This is about the survival of Capitalism itself. It took the New Deal and World War II to end the Great Depression. It now takes the Generic Holiday Season to keep it from coming back. If some strange spiritual plague caused Christianity to die out within the next year, our consumer culture would have no choice but to continue the “Holiday Season” as usual.
The issue now isn’t that one of Christianity’s most sacred seasons might be profaned. After all, saying that the season is about “doing for others” may make it sound less commercial, but it doesn’t make it any more Christian.
Bear in mind that something like this has happened before. The Romans had a big winter festival, “Sol Invictus,” long before Christianity. December 25 was deliberately made “Christmas,” not because there were records of Jesus’ actual date of birth, but precisely to replace the pagan feast. What if we’ve reached the point in history where something else—a new sacred season called “The Holidays”—is replacing Christmas? That would explain why John Parise caught such flak when he made his “big mistake.” In a culture that increasingly avoids even mentioning Jesus in connection with “The Holidays,” Santa is a sacred idol in many families; exposing him as a myth is “cruel” because it breaks a sacred taboo.
The Romans were smarter, perhaps; at least their feast to the “Invincible Sun” worshipped something God created. Our culture has created its own idols: Santa, the mall, Capitalism itself.
So don’t blame the DJ for stealing Christmas. Or the Grinch. We’ve stolen it ourselves. For, just as the Romans were quick to quit their own traditional feast for the new Christian holyday, millions of American Christians are happy to join the new generic “Holiday Spirit”—provided nobody tells the kids the truth about Santa.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2003
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