Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Did you enjoy the holidays? If so, good, that makes one of us.
This past month provided an opportunity for students at the University and across the country to forget about their worries for a while. Relationship issues? Trouble with school? Finally realizing the futility of a bachelor’s degree in linguistics? Don’t worry, five weeks is plenty of time to numb your emotions with alcohol or your preferred illicit drug.
In all honesty though, what I went home looking forward to most was the holidays. Family, food and friends, in that order. Even New Year’s, a celebration that for me goes hand in hand with social awkwardness, seemed appealing. But then the holidays came, and I realized something that struck a serious blow to my fragile sense of innocence.
The values of the holidays are gone. Or at least they’ve changed into something no longer recognizable. What happened? After all, the United States has long been at the forefront of social, cultural, even religious innovation. Just think: This is the country that decided NFL football was best played on Sundays, and thereby allowed men everywhere to eat fried chicken and worship Brett Favre instead of go to church and thank Jesus for sacrificing so much. And yet it seems the true meaning of these once holy days is now in flux.
Did you feel at some point during the holidays like you were just going through the motions? For me that moment came when my family ordered pizza for dinner on the third night of Hanukkah. I love pizza, and was psyched by the decision. But lying in bed that night, I realized part of me had died, a part not easily affected by cheesy goodness. It was the part of me that longed to be part of a tradition, something larger than myself.
Most of you probably celebrated Christmas. But don’t worry; this problem doesn’t discriminate by religion. Nor is it an entirely new phenomenon. Maybe you’ve heard of “The War on Christmas.” It refers to the struggle between righteous traditionalists and their heathen counterparts over the definition of Christmas itself. Or something like that. All I really know is that to be a traditionalist you have to get mad when someone says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and to be a heathen you simply have to question the existence of God. Both seem like equally good ways of making friends to me. But maybe this isn’t so much a war on Christmas as it is the manifestation of a generational affront on the concept of tradition itself… during Christmas time.
There are two types of people in this world: Old folks, and young folks. Each group has its own general set of values. For instance, old folks tend to believe in hard work, discipline, and the inherent laziness of ethnic minorities. Young folks, by contrast, tend to examine what the old folks value and consciously choose to value the opposite. That’s not to say we don’t all have shared values. But once you get beyond the obvious ones, like peace and friendship, people’s real differences start to show.
We are in the midst of a “culture war,” as Bill O’Reilly has accurately put it. It happened in the Roaring ’20s, the Psychedelic ’60s, and it’s happening again in the new millennium. This one pits baby boomers against MySpacers, guitar players against Guitar Heroes, and coming to terms with what was against coming to terms with what’s still to come. Now we could spend all day arguing the merits of wisdom and experience versus youthful idealism. Or we could just say to hell with it, out with the old and in with the new. Which brings us back to the holidays. Instead of asking how we can change our values to fit the holidays, we should be asking how we can change the holidays to fit our values.
Santa could provide condoms to anyone over the age of 11, and give out a wealth of STD-prevention pamphlets upon request. How’s that for holiday cheer? While we’re at it, hook some of his reindeer up with sponsorship deals. Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now Prancer and Victoria’s Secret Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid brought to you by Planned Parenthood! On, Donner and Blitzen! For those of you who pledged to change for the better this year, why not test your New Year’s resolution against the divine will of God, by sending Him your personal resolution via text message? Each text could cost a dollar and all proceeds would go toward sending Bibles to families in third-world countries. These are just a few ideas to make the holidays more inclusive for everyone; see if you can’t think of a few yourselves.
Short of the type of innovative thinking described here; however, I don’t know if there’s much we can do to reverse this value degradation. There’s a generation gap, a continual clash of cultures, to which fighting against makes as much sense as fighting government corruption with a blog. “The times they are a’ changing,” Bob Dylan said. It’s a fact not to be ideated upon, to have the positive and negative elements weighed in hopes of arriving at some conclusion. It’s reality, and the sooner we face it the better off we’ll be.
Now if I could just shake this feeling we’re changing for the worse.
[email protected]