By: Sean Stoker, staff writer, sean.stoker7@gmail.com
If there was ever a cliché more hackneyed and overused than the person who hates Christmas and everything to do with the holiday season, I’ve yet to hear it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to shove Christmas or Christianity down your throat. You’re entitled to your own beliefs and can choose for yourself. But the most common reasons people cite for hating the holidays, outside of religion, are agonizingly superficial. If you claim any of the following reasons for loathing all things yule, I hereby sentence you to forty lashes with a comically over-sized candy cane, you scrooge.
1) “It’s gotten too commercial!”
Starting shortly before Halloween, the American populace is subjected to two and a half months of advertisements: catalogs, television, Internet, billboards, radio, telepathy, oh my! It becomes very easy to give in and fulfill your obligation to be a good little consumer and rack up so much debt that your grandchildren will be poor. Anyone being inundated with that much consumerism will naturally feel the malaise and nausea it brings.
But the rookie mistake that is often made here is transferring the simultaneous boredom and rage distilled from Progressive Insurance commercials to Christmas itself. Those commercials have nothing to do with Christmas, other than trying to capitalize on the season of giving.
The commercialization of the holidays should be irrelevant to how you feel about Christmas. It’s like hating all music just because Bruno Mars exists. Is he annoying, overproduced, and generic? For the love of Kris Kringle, yes! But there’s so much more out there, I’d rather explore all the positives than focus on the most objectionable negatives.
2) “Christmas music starts playing too early!”
Show me 100 different people that listen to Christmas music to any degree, and I’ll show you 100 different sets of rules and regulations governing when, where, and how Christmas music should be played. I’ve heard many people claim that carols should not enter the airwaves until after Thanksgiving. I’ve met some snobs that believe Christmas music should really only be played the week of the actual holiday. I also knew an insane girl in middle school who loved to listen to carols year round, much to the annoyance of everyone else in our carpool.
The point is, the second Rudolph rears his ugly head, there are just as many haters wanting to slay the little reindeer as there are carol-lovers singing his ballad.
But might I submit that, just because it’s Christmas music doesn’t mean it has to sound like the trite stuff you hear on the radio.
There are Christmas tunes to satisfy just about any taste. My boys from Weezer made a great Christmas EP. Trans-Siberian Orchestra is always worth a listen. Relient K put out a fun yuletide album, as did Ozzy Osbourne, Simple Plan, Blink-182, Kenny Rogers, Lady Antebellum, Elton John, Smashing Pumpkins, and so many other artists I couldn’t begin to list them all.
Christmas isn’t the genre, it’s the subject matter. If you can’t find holiday music you like, it’s your own fault.
3) “Santa brought me a cruddy gift a couple years ago, and Christmas has seemed stupid ever since!”
Grow up, you baby. Forgive me for sounding like an after-school special, but the whole point of this holiday is philanthropy. It’s about loving your friends and family enough that seeing happiness on their faces is better than any gift you could possibly get.
Do you know how many people would love to receive any gift at all, even those comfy tube socks you scoffed at between sips of eggnog? For shame, sir, for shame.
4) “I always gain so much weight over the holidays!”
This is one of the greatest aspects of Christmas: free-license to hibernate underneath the covers gathering nourishment from nothing but chocolate oranges, candy canes, gingerbread, eggnog and whatever holiday-themed baked good ventures too close to your mouth.
Christmas gives you the opportunity to treat your body in a way that would, any other time of the year, would earn you your own Dr. Phil special. And no consequences, save a few pounds of flab you can shake off come spring! In the end, isn’t that the greatest gift of all?
