It’s Christmas time and the Grinches and Scrooges are out in full force throughout our great land. The “Woke Police” are coming for Christmas. I indicated in a previous column that the “Happy Holidays” greeting doesn’t bother me, and it doesn’t. The person who wishes you “Happy Holidays” may be trying to be sensitive to your tradition or be of a different belief themselves. They may be trying to be inclusive of the entire holiday season – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. They may be Jewish and celebrating the retaking of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple which took place in the Second Century BCE (Before the Common Era, which replaced BC – Before Christ, the irony is BCE is still dated from Christ’s birth, but this is a subject for another column). That celebration is known as Hanukkah and takes place this year between December 18th through the 26th. The person who wishes you “Happy Holidays” may be a celebrant of the African-American holiday of Kwanzaa which occurs December 26th through New Year’s Day, every year. In any event, their hearts are in the right place, and they are not Christmas fun suckers.
The ”Woke Police” however are Christmas fun suckers and have a number of complaints about various Christmas specials, songs and carols. I won’t go into all of them, but I’ll discuss a representative sample to give you a flavor of what “traditional” Christmas is up against.
The first complaint is that not everyone is Christian. That’s true of course. So, the logic goes, if we are going to celebrate the season at all it should be as “Xmas” rather than “Christ’s mass”. That sentiment may be sincerely held and come from the best of inclusive intentions, but it is misplaced. The X is Greek and is pronounced “Ich – thus” which sounds remarkably similar to “Christmas”. The X is Greek for fish, as in the symbol of Christianity, which is an emblem that adorns many a Christian’s bumper. Consequently, whether you’re a “Christmas” or “Xmas” person you’re really saying the same thing, whether you realize it or not. Schools don’t teach Greek or Latin anymore so I guess we can fault public education for the ignorance of the woke crowd. However, they have no one but themselves to blame for their insufferable behavior.
Next, there are several Christmas tunes that the woke mob have in their sights. Mele Kalikimaka should be banned, they say, since it appropriates Hawaiian culture. If it were going to be banned instead on the basis that it’s hard to pronounce and sing, maybe I could get behind that one. Wokesters demand Santa Baby be shelved because it is a song about the pure greed of a gold digger. First, it’s bad because of the materialistic insatiability for things in a season that should be about the less fortunate amongst us. It’s also awful, according to the woke horde, because it is misogynistic. That’s because the song paints women as shallow, money-grubbing creatures. The long knives are also out for Baby It’s Cold Outside because, according to people who look for the evil in everything, it is essentially a song about a rapacious fellow who is a closet sexual predator. The song was written by Frank Loesser; the man who created the musicals How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and Guys and Dolls, amongst other projects. He wrote Baby It’s Cold Outside for a party he went to in 1944 with his wife Lynn Garland. They sang it, as a married couple, at the party as a one off but it was so popular, he soon sold it to Hollywood. It later appeared on the movie soundtrack to Neptune’s Daughter (1949) and won the Academy Award for the Best Original Song. The song is playful, while the underlying motive of the man is clear. However, he is using persuasion not coercion. The woman is resisting virtuously in the song although, if you listen to the lyrics carefully, her response is more along the lines of concern over what people will think instead of objecting to the substance of his suggestion per se. The list of songs goes on but as Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
As I say, there are other ditties the woke throng are gunning for but let’s move on to Christmas specials. Elf is to be shunned by those who are extremely politically correct because it makes light of a person who appears to be “slow”, mentally challenged in other words. I love the movie Elf and watch it every Christmas season. I’ve never thought that the character of Buddy the Elf is mentally challenged the way the character of Forrest Gump is mentally challenged as an example, but rather that Buddy the Elf is innocent as a child in a world he clearly doesn’t understand. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is to be rejected because the bullying by the other reindeer in the piece is triggering according to the Snowflakes who have appointed themselves the guardians of our culture. Frosty the Snowman should be avoided because it creates unrealistic expectations in children that the snowmen they build in their yards will come to life. The deliberate attempt by the villain in cartoon to shut Frosty in the greenhouse to melt him and get the magic hat back is an on-screen attempted murder that children shouldn’t be subjected to, according to the woke mob. A Charlie Brown Christmas is too overtly religious with Linus’ recitation of the Christmas story as related in the Book of Luke from the Bible. Other Christmas specials fall into the same category, like The Little Drummer Boy. Who knew that Christmas was so fraught with psychological peril or that children were deaf, dumb and blind to the redemption of the main characters in these specials and how they triumph in the end. It makes me wonder, did these woke snowflakes watch these Christmas specials to their conclusion? A Nativity Scene in public is an affront to the nonreligious asserts the woke police and so forth and so on.
Celebrate Christmas or don’t celebrate Christmas, I don’t care but do keep your carping yaps shut. These songs, specials, traditions and affectations aren’t hurting, humiliating or dehumanizing anyone. This is America and you have a First Amendment right to an opinion of course. However, you’re not morally obligated to inflict that opinion on the rest of us. Woke, mirthless busybodies are not entitled to rain cold-hearted gloom, persnickety political correctness or to try to enforce their view of what is right and proper on those of us enjoying the holiday during this blessed season of joy either.
Have a Merry Christmas, a Blessed Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa or a Happy Holiday whichever may apply to you!