I’m gearing up for the Christmas season.
Other steps: smashing the radio so I don’t have to suffer with those damn Christmas carols. Digging up my Santa hat so I can wander the streets of Morris telling excited children that I’ll be bringing them spiders. It’s a good time of year to be a curmudgeon.
I’m always dismayed when classical music stations feel compelled to broadcast insipid Christmas carols, when they have works available like Handel’s “Messiah” or Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. “Jingle Bells”? Really? So I switch between the two I listen to. Last night I escaped “Little Drummer Boy.” Ugh.
This war should be over by Christmas.
Well, given my previous practice of playing our base Surly Claus, I’ll go for a horned hat and be Krampus.
Now, to find some birch trees, to make proper bundles… Gotta arrest the development of nascent Chads and Karens.
The adult form, given over to some of my forest fiends, erm, friends. ;)
This might be a crime against humanity:
https://youtu.be/wAhyeUxk8iQ
Enjoy.
I could dress up like Santa, and tell kids that I died on the cross. I could also tell them how much I’ve enjoyed eating venison recently. Confuse both them, and their parents when the kids tell them what Santa told them.
Probably a good thing I don’t live in Morris then, otherwise my daughter would be getting excited about getting spiders, and I would have to have discussions with my wife about getting pet spiders, and I’m not sure I’m ready to care for pets yet…
I’ve been an atheist for over 50 years but I
love Christmas. The carols, the trees, Santa Claus, the candies, the pageantry of the church services – pretty much everything but eggnog.
“The war on Christmas cannot end until Christmas ends its illegal occupation of November. “
@8. And it releases Hanukkah as an independent holiday.
Re: anthonybarcellas @ #1…
Ageed. My wife was grousing on Thursday whenever our local classical station played Christmas music, even legitimately classical Christmas music. Her complaint? “It isn’t even Advent yet.”
Fortunately, they put most of their Christmas music on a separate channel, except for 36 hours starting Christmas Eve, when they run it non-stop. We just turn it off the stream and play other things. (My “alarm clock” is a Raspberry Pi that streams their internet feed, but it has several CDs worth of material–16GB of .wav files–on a local USB drive.)
The thing that amuses me about the classical music station is that Ragtime is–apparently–now classical music. They play pieces by Louis Gottschalk and Scott Joplin. Mind you, I don’t object to them being played. I like Ragtime. It’s just kind of dislocating the hear it as “classical”.
I want my Saturnalia back.
This year I’m going to swap places with Boris and, in accordance with tradition, turn the world upside down by making a concise and well-argued speech announcing the early adoption of preventative measures against the new Covid variant. It’ll be a hoot.
@4 No fecking might about it .
@5 I have seen a meme about how the Japanese haven’t quite got the hang of xmas ,it showed santa on a cross in a shop window .
@12 david
White Santa died on the cross to forgive the sins of capitalism.
@14 It was a tax write off .
Talking of pressies .I wonder how many mad scientists this was responsible for .
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4823536891041906&set=gm.494262265058696
Last week was the 30th anniversary of the death of Freddy Mercury. Can we make a new holiday about him?
@7 Chris 61
People who say they love Christmas as a secular, non-religious holiday were almost always, once Christian. As an atheist and nominal Jew, I have always been pissed off by the compulsory celebration of Christmas in this country. There was a Christmas tree in my high school (in the 50s.) I found it presumptuous and irritating then.
@9 Susan Montgomery
Hanukkah was a minor holiday until the c.1940s. 1st generation immigrant and diasporic Jewish Americans promoted Hanukkah beyond its original status, so their kids wouldn’t feel left out when their Christian friends were lavished with Christmas presents.
I agree with other commenters about the scourge of non-stop “Christmas music” this time of years. Some of this music has musical merit, until I’ve heard it 50 times each year.
I know this is never going to happen, but I would really like to see a genuine panto show in London during this time.
Hell, I’d like to see London at any time.
Sigh.
@fishy #17:
Priti Patel was recently described as a pantomime authoritarian, and you can see her act live in London. Does that count?
Speak for yourself. It’s rude to pigeon-hole people. My family has been atheist for four generations and never in my lifetime, my mother, or either of my maternal grandparent’s life have any of us ever been Christian (my great-grandfather may have been raised Protestant but it really irked him and he wanted no part of it in his adult life and kept it away from his kids; my father’s family was Jewish). And I like Christmas, very very much. [Especially the eggnog.] (Okay, I hate the television commercials, and tawdry advertising, and can’t stand the shopping music… But the holiday itself, I like a lot.)
I like Christmas too the decorations and seeing family and sometimes the gifts ( for the kids ) . Christmas music meh . After I’ve heard Jingle Bell Rock once I’m happy . It was a favorite as a little kid. But just once !
Some aspects of Xmas / Yuletide are nice. Up in Scandinavia it is mostly a secular tradition now, with vestigal traces of religion. In Sweden the tradition of watching the Disney Christmas TV show – with various excerpts of classic Disney films- has gone on for sixty years and has a stronger grip on tradition than Jesus.
And at New Years’ Eve we watch Ivanhoe – not the 1952 one, the 1982 one with Sam Neill.
.
We have adopted the German tradition of an adventskalender, opening a frame every day the 24 days before Christmas to see the image hidden behind.
Is there any english-language country that has this tradition?
I rather wish we had the central European tradition of Krampus, the evil anti-santa, to scare the kids. Or Schwarze Pieet.
Christmas song I hate the most David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing the little drummer boy . That one makes me want to poke out my eardrums.
birgerjohansson @21: How about the Icelandic tradition of the Yule Cat that eats people who don’t receive new clothes for Christmas?
brightmoon @20:
I’ve heard Jingle Bell Rock way too many times, and I’m definitely not happy about that.
Chris @7 — Gosh, couldn’t possibly be that we were all raised in Christian (or Catholic) families, and didn’t have a choice in the matter, could it?
there are two aspects to these seasonal holidays that are at play here as i se it.
There are the feelings and the showing of affection that is generally associated with them and the symbology attached to the holidays. In the northern hemisphere it is winter and the days are shorter many cultures had special ways to acknowledge the events around the turning of the seasons and the days length and the sun’s return.
In the west currently many of the symbols are centered around the story of the birth of jesus even to give it his name.
I find little interest in any of the symbology some of which does not have very much to do with the bible nor first century Palestine. it is OK and it is the way people in the west now are able to acknowledge there affection with each other and their neighbor (at best but no guarantees)
the music how ever has pretty much worn out any good feelings it may once have engendered in me.
While I have for some time not believed in the christian mythology the gross exploitation of the season for profit I find extremely repellent It is interesting and challenging how ever trying to find ways to express my feelings about my friends and family without resorting to the tired traditional cliches.
@birgerjohansson #21:
I prefer the BBC series from the late 90s, if only for Christopher Lee’s role. He plays the Templar Grand Master and puts across the power of that position, as an old man in a world of jousts and duels dominated by young men, through his voice and his stance.
Yes, that’s common in the UK. These days there’s usually a sweet behind each door rather than an image alone, since the religious images mean less now to people (especially the younger generations). Unfortunately I’m too old to have benefitted from the sweets…
I’m with Tim on this one
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_CeY0VdhXK8
Microraptor @ 23
This is a tradition that needs to be imported to America and continental Europe.
…And we need a Christmas Xenomorph that will reproduce inside kids that come too close.
If you have a lot of pent-up irritation about Christmas, I recommend the fan-based parody where Vegeta kills Santa:
“Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Plan to Eradicate Christmas (TFS)”
@ 31
And a Happy Freiza Day to you too.
There are only four good Christmas songs:
This Christmas by Donny Hathaway
Someday At Christmas by Stevie Wonder
Last Christmas by Wham
Happy Christmas War Is Over by John & Yoko
Once I’ve heard these songs and “Fat Daddy” I’m good for Christmas music.
Blink-182: I Won’t Be Home for Christmas.
“All Holidays Matter”. Maybe I should incorporate that into a stand up routine.
I’m glad I live where I do. I can remember dolts in Canada getting touchy because my response to “merry cheezwhiz” was always a polite “See you tomorrow / Monday.” Say that in any other month, and it goes unremarked. But say in December, and you’re labelled “rude” for resisting forced participation?
brightmoon (#22) –
One raped underage girls, the other violently beat his kids. What’s not to like, if you’re a xian?
Crosby was violent but not sexually abusive. He left the rape of children to his niece, a catholic nun.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/knowing-and-not-knowing-a-catholic-pedophile/