No matter how conscientious one is at trying to stay out of line of fire and wait for the attack to be over, it seems impossible to avoid entirely the almost literally non-stop bombardment of "holiday" ads --- in print, on television, on billboards, on the radio, before movies, on virtually every site in the virtual world of the internet. It can be done, of course, but it would require a true retreat from the world, not merely a vague attempt to ignore, and I'm not willing to do that, so I continue to be hit, as it were. I wish that they were, as so many old movies and TV shows put it, only flesh wounds, but I know better: each one is a blow to the soul.
This has been going on for so long that most of us take it for granted, although I think that it goes beyond that. My intuition is that some critical mass of us now positively affirms the contemporary nature of "the holidays" with all its pressure to buy exactly the right thing for all those people who are going to be disappointed and critical if you don't; to entertain friends, neighbors, and family, and to do it in a way that will not allow for criticism from them; and to be "joyful" through it all. "The Holidays" as social and emotional obligation: One can almost see the old cartoon portrayals of the fat, cigar-smoking capitalists chuckling with satisfaction at how cleverly they have co-opted the events and manipulated us.
This is, of course, not just cognitive dissonance but the imposition --- and now the embracing --- of obligations that are impossible to meet. Through the influence of the most talented and effective industrial psychologists in the world, we have become our own crazy-making torturers.
(From 1958, here is Stan Freberg's "Green Christmas" wherein he satirizes the commercialization of Christmas. He was right then, but the current reality has gone way beyond what he was seeing. For one, we have successfully commodified all the traditions of Christmas. Even the most faithful or the most sentimental stories are vaguely accepted as just part of the great blob of "holiday tradition.")
I suggest that, to the extent each of us finds it possible, to step outside this dance circle and think about and act on either of two actually meaningful ways of looking at these end-of-year celebrations. (There are other traditional and meaningful celebrations at this time of year, none of which I know enough about to include here.)
The first is the orthodox Christian understanding of Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation, the coming into the world of the Messiah, God Himself choosing to live not only among His creatures but as one of them; to live a fully human life with all its joys and sorrows; and ultimately to suffer and die, just as we do. The story as it used to be told was this: After Adam and Eve had committed the Original Sin, one of the effects was that Heaven was closed to humans, and it would take a sacrifice to overcome the effects of that sin and to re-open the gates of Heaven, and that is why the Son of God came to live among us and to die for us.
Whatever your theological position on this story, it is undeniably, as Fulton Oursler put it, The Greatest Story Ever Told.
So Christmas --- the Mass of the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah --- is the remembrance, the celebration of what believing Christians see as the most auspicious event in the history of the world. (It is no accident the world of Christendom saw history as separated into the time before the coming of the Christ and the time after the coming of the Christ.)
In this way of thinking about Christmas, the giving of gifts to one another is a small, symbolic representation of the great gift of Salvation given by God to His creatures. And it is supposed to be a reminder that, to put it crudely, we are all in this together, that God came to be with all of us so that we all could be redeemed, that we are all eternally loved creatures of an eternally and infinitely loving God. So gathering in some kind of communion is also a way to symbolize the great truths of our existence and of history.
I think it's obvious that the emphasis on material and emotional vanities has very little to do with Christmas as understood in this orthodox way. On this understanding, Christmas is a formalized opportunity for us to remember and to affirm the greatest truth of our existence.
The second is a pagan understanding. Our reptilian hind brain is still at work and one of the things it registers is that the sun, immediately after the summer solstice, begins to head south with no guarantee that it will ever come back. Try to imagine our most ancient ancestors, aware enough of natural changes to pay attention to the shortening days and lengthening nights and dropping temperatures, but not sophisticated enough to be sure that the process would reverse itself and that the sun would come back north, the days would get longer, and the temperatures would rise.
So historically there are pre-Christian and non-Christian celebrations that come only days after the winter solstice, as the sun starts to come back and the days get a little longer, because once again we have been spared the catastrophe that the sun's dropping off to the south and disappearing from our lives would bring.
What is common to both understandings is that we have been saved, and what is called for is humble and celebratory gratitude. Whether in the sacramental tradition of Christianity or the feasting tradition of paganism, what is appropriate is celebratory thanksgiving.
"The Holidays" are not meant to be a time that we celebrate getting together but a time when we get together to celebrate our salvation, however we define that.
If you want to fight back against the "corporate fat cats," re-claiming the end-of-year celebrations as meaningful rather than materialistic would be great way to do it.
