Category: default || By jt3y

The Christmakwanukah# lights in our neighborhood began to appear before Thanksgiving, but as of last weekend, it's been like living on the Vegas strip. One house literally has enough lights on it that you can read a newspaper classified section off of the glow at night. Another has a giant inflatable Chilly Willy the penguin. (At least it looks like Chilly Willy, sitting on his igloo and wearing a toque, although I don't see Maxie the Polar Bear anywhere, and frankly, most penguins look alike to me.)

Wal-Mart or Pool City must have had a sale on animated light-up choo-choo trains, because three houses have identical light-up choo-choo trains, "puffing" clouds of smoke (actually, blinking lights). Two houses that are next to one another, in fact, have those choo-choo trains, running at top speed all night long.

Wouldn't you think that one of those homeowners, when they realized that the people next door had the same animated train on their lawn, would have been embarrassed enough to return their choo-choo to the store and exchange it for something else? Isn't it something like showing up at a party in the exact same clothes as someone else? Or at the very least, couldn't they have pooled their resources and put the two choo-choos together to make a longer train?

In any event, my neighbors must think I'm a Communist, or at least the neighborhood atheist. I don't have a single light or ornament or red velvet bow or giant plastic candy cane or anything outside. Supposedly, the fellow from whom I bought the house left strings of lights for me up in the attic, but I've neither the time nor the strong inclination to go up and look for them.

And if I do have time before Christmas to find the lights and toss a few strings of twinkle lights outside, you can be darned sure I'm not outlining the whole house. A few lights in the bushes are sufficient. They're like sprinkles on a doughnut. Just as I don't want to sit down and eat an entire bowl of sprinkles, I don't want to drape my house in Christmakwanukah lights.

It's not that I'm against Christmakwanukah lights in general. I kind of like a little festive holiday decorating. But there's a fine line between "festive holiday decorating" and erecting the kind of light displays that change the habits of migratory birds.

It's gaudy. It's excessive. It's tacky. It's borderline profane.

In other words, I suppose it's quintessentially American.

The funny thing is that I don't remember anyone --- at least in my little part of the Mon-Yough area --- going this nuts with Christmakwanukah lights when I was a kid. There are probably a number of reasons for that. First, strings of lights have become much, much cheaper; and then again, I grew up just as the economy of the Mon Valley was collapsing, so people probably didn't have the money to spare on gaudy light displays.

But I also wonder if it's only a coincidence that the over-the-top light displays began to appear in earnest after "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" started to run on television. People, Clark Griswold's light display was funny was because it was so over-the-top --- it wasn't the baseline target to shoot for.

Of course, there are worse things to spend money on than holiday light displays, and more important things to complain about. If it makes you happy to run 14 kW of Christmakwanukah lights around your tract house, then by all means, do so.

In the meantime, I may just set mirrors up around my house to reflect the glow of the lights from the other houses. It will have much the same effect at a fraction of the cost and effort.

And while we're speaking of this season, when we celebrate the birth of Thomas Edison, who invented Christmakwanukah lights, I tend to agree with James Lileks:

There's this peculiar fear of Christmas that seems to get stronger every year, as if it's the season that dare not speak its name. Check out the U.S. Postal Service Web site: two different stamps for Kwanzaa. One for Eid, two for Hanukkah. Two for non-sectarian "Holiday," with pictures of Santa, reindeer, ornaments, that sort of thing. One for the Chinese New Year. One for those religiously inclined -- it features a Madonna and Child. But the Web site calls it "Holiday Traditional." The word "Christmas" doesn't appear on the site's description of the stamps. Eid, yes. Hanukkah, yes. Kwanzaa, yes. Christmas? No. It's Holiday Traditional.

...

Yes, "Merry Christmas" means different things to different people. To those disinclined to follow the creed it represents, it speaks to the cultural traditions of America; to those who take spiritual succor from the season, it means something else. Bottom line in either case: Be happy. And if you're about to throw down the paper and fire off an angry letter to the editor, stop: Think. I wish you a Merry Christmas. I really do. That's all there is to it.

On the one hand, I am rather strenuously against government's meddling of any kind in religion, whether explicitly or offhandedly. I like God and government so much that I'd like them to stay as far apart as possible. And besides, there is a significant minority of people in the U.S. who either don't believe in God, or don't accept the New Testament.

But on the other hand, I'd argue that empty phrases like "Happy Holidays" are pretty transparent.

Happy what holidays?

Well, um ... New Year's Day. And, um. That other one.

Which one?

Um, the one between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26.

Exactly.

And don't try to force-fit Hanukkah into that "Happy Holidays" business. The last time I checked, mistletoe, holly and green and red wrapping paper were not traditional symbols of the Festival of Lights. Blue and silver? Yes. Menorahs? Yes. Santa Claus --- aka "St. Nicholas" --- and the reindeer? No.

I mean, for crying out loud, the very word "holidays" is derived from "holy days." As in "days with religious significance." In the Catholic Church, Jan. 1 is, in fact, a holy day of obligation, meaning that Catholics are expected to attend Mass! (How many of them do is a subject of some debate, and in fact, because this Jan. 1 falls on a Saturday, the obligation is lifted. So, Catholics, feel free to get as drunk as you like on New Year's Eve; you can sleep in.)

In the end, it's a silly battle to fight. If the left wants to fight for the separation of church and state, then they should go complain about the judge who showed up on the bench in Alabama with the Ten Commandments embroidered on his robe. (Unless the nuns learned me wrong, the first one is "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." While I'm no theologian, that seems like a pretty strong endorsement of religion.)

But picking on public schools that sing "The First Noel" or put up signs that say "Merry Christmas" just hurts the cause of separation of church and state, and makes liberals look intolerant, humorless and parsimonious. You're fighting against Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus, for goodness sake. Why not attack baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet, while you're at it?

And as for the right, they need to get a firmer grasp on reality, too. I'm tired of them running around hyperventilating (I'm looking at you, Fox News and talk radio) whenever some isolated busybody gets their peasant shirt in a bunch over some second-graders singing "Silent Night."

Hey, right-wingers: You want to protect Christmas? Fight against the over-commercialization of the season. Fight against people going thousands of dollars in debt to buy Christmas presents. Fight against retailers and media outlets who make it seem like it's our civic and moral duty to buy those presents. Consumerism and taking on large debts are specifically condemned by the Bible --- both the Old and New Testaments.

Otherwise, keep quiet and relax. Christmas is in no danger of disappearing.

At least as long as the manufacturers of Christmas lights have anything to say about it.

Update: I realized the day after this entry appeared that my use of "Christmakwanukah" was not an original invention; I subconsciously lifted a similar idea from an entry that Aly Brashear wrote on Selling Myself Down the River last week. (She called it "Christmahanukwanzaka.")

Even as I wrote "Christmakwanukah," I had the nagging feeling that it probably wasn't an original concept, but I couldn't remember where I had seen something similar. I tried "Googling" the word and nothing came up. Anyway, credit where credit is due! Correction, not perfection, is our watchword.

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