White Christmas

As the holidays approach, DOD is thankful that President Inevitable came along to reinstate our right to use the word ‘Christmas’ in public. If you claim ignorance to the abridgement of this right, you are not in touch with your conservative victimhood. 

Christmas for me is a lovely time of year, despite the fact that I live in Minneapolis, where temperatures two weeks ago sank to twenty-two degrees below zero. Not the wind-chill – the actual measurement on the magic mercury stick. Anyway, it’s a festive two-week stretch when I’m able to spend time with friends and family, gathered around the dinner table or the cribbage board (for those not in the know, take a look – there’s no better way to kill a few hours and a bottle of brown…you might refer to it as a gentleman’s game, unless of course you are playing with me or anybody I know). The season isn’t complete until we’ve corralled on the couch as a family and watched Holiday Inn – the 1942 movie for which Irving Berlin first penned the song “White Christmas” (and star Bing Crosby’s recorded version of the titular song remains the best-selling single of all time). The season is, in a word, merry. 

Minneapolis is a diverse town that’s home to many second or third generation white families like mine, but also a dense immigrant population who have brought with them their own cultural and religious traditions. Still, the Macy’s department store downtown has continued to host a lavish Christmas-themed exhibition, which it has for decades (as does the Mall of America). The shopping centers and public spaces are filled with Balsam Firs, decorated with silver strings and colored lights, and parents can still encourage their young children to sit on the lap of a sweaty old stranger (photo op!) just about anywhere. Yet for some, this saturation isn’t enough. The great America to which some wish to return is the America of the 40s and 50s – the America of Holiday Inn, a movie where the only black characters were Mamie the housekeeper and her two young children. An America that birthed McCarthyism and the pervasive suspicion of ‘others’ through witch hunts and blacklists. An America where no one would question Christmas as the only valid December tradition. There’s no room for change or growth, or variance from a world view defined by the grainy memories of their youth and the black and (mostly) white films of decades gone by. It’s worth pointing out that the landmark Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling came down in 1954, and thus began the civil rights movement…a movement built on the simple premise that maybe Jefferson meant it when he said we were all created equal. This was the tipping point for white America – the point at which their monopoly on prosperity and opportunity began to unravel as decent legislators finally decided to honor the language of the Founders. The great America which a minority of voters endorsed this November is the America that preceded this movement. As we say here at DOD, you are now free to appraise the coincidence. 

There is a lot of unease as we head into 2017, but – to borrow a phrase from Mamie – don’t “sit around like a jellyfish with the misery” this holiday season. If you hear someone grousing about agnostic coffee cup design or the deranged liberal worldview of inclusion, remind them that Christmas actually has its roots in the very un-Christian traditions of Saturnalia and Yule, and that maybe their demand that everybody celebrate as they do is misbegotten. Because people enjoy learning that you are smarter than them. 

Merry Christmas, Donut-holes.