Walk On Podcast Episode 70 : ThE wAr On ChRiStMaS
“Happy Holidays!”
You say it to your neighbor, full of holiday spirit, trying to spread a lil’ cheer. “MeRRrY ChRiStMaS!!” he sneers like Mr. Hyde. What the fuck was that about? you ask yourself as you continue about your day. And he grumbles like Yosemite Sam into the cold, shoulders up ‘round his ears, which do actually appear to be emitting steam.
I hate to break this to you, but you may have just unwittingly engaged in The War on Christmas.
“But!! But!! No arms were drawn, no harsh words exchanged, I didn’t even mean any harm!!” you contest. It doesn’t matter. Your certificate of induction into the PC mafia will be emailed to one of your free-trial burner email accounts in 24-48 hours. Welcome to the dark side.
White Conservative Christians, especially those with McAllister mansions, are not marginalized in the slightest. Maybe that makes them feel a little left out. Maybe nobody likes to think of themselves as the Ebenezer Scrooge archetype. Maybe the Fox News Propagandists understand that evoking xenophobia and fear of progress into the hearts of their followers is the fastest route to maintaining control. And maybe, just maybe, there’s just a hint of gaslighting taking place.
In abuse dynamics, one manner of gaslighting a victim is to re-frame the abuser/victim dynamic by reversing it. If someone who is being abused gets angry and yells, for example, because they’ve been pushed too far, the abuser will say “look at you, look at what a monster you are, I’m not even yelling! Maybe it’s you who’s abusing me.” It works because it puts the victim on the defense. This is also often the main tactic used during smear campaigns, which are used to punish and discredit the victim for daring to get away. “If an abuser can’t control you, they will control how others see you.” It’s rough stuff.
Conservative Christian wealthy white people hold systemic power. Colonization and the role Christianity played as a control mechanism in that whole thing aside, the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy favors those who check it’s overlapping boxes, so to speak. And yet, pastors get on stage Sunday after Sunday, preaching about the dying morals of the nuclear family, the threat of liberal hedonism on Christian values, and—between Thanksgiving and Christmas—The War On Christmas.
It’s all made up.
The same way that queer people having legal rights to marriage has literally no effect on straight marriage, some people not celebrating Christmas exclusively has no effect on Christians who do. Being inclusive is not damaging. It does no harm. In fact, studies have shown that simply being exposed to other cultures greatly reduces prejudice.
And by the way, the Christmas we know and (some people) love wasn’t even codified until Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and, a little later, soda giant and cocaine pusher Coke-a-Cola introduced a red-velvet-wearing-jelly-tummied-rosie-cheeked Santa as part of their holiday ad campaign. It’s literally a capitalist invention!! And what’s not comes from a cautionary tale about the evils of wealth-hoarding workaholic landlords who have to be emotionally tortured by ghosts to see the error of their ways. What’s left after that is pretty much pagan in origin. Oh, the irony.
As usual, white christian conservative propagandists work their critical-thought lacking followers into a state of hysteria over something completely and (almost) comically (if only it weren’t so dangerous) made up. Love 2 see it.
