For some reason, people bemoan the commercialization of Christmas. The secular trappings of the holiday season are oft vilified, and the collective boo-hooing of a commerce-centric Christmas is an annual affair (you'd be hard-pressed to find an era when the straight-laced wet-blanket set wasn't complaining about the holiday - that all the spiced mutton pies and ginger chews were a devilish distraction). Christmas advertising has breached the dividing wall and claimed eminent domain over all of November - it has people up in arms. God forbid - instead of ads with cars, we get ads with cars with bows on them. And don't get me started on the bible-beater crackpots waging war on Santa - shut your mouths, that man is a goddamn saint.
If the masses actually cared enough to establish a pristine version of Christmas, untainted by ad-revenue and sales data, they would collectively "vote with their wallets" and refrain from buying so much junk and consuming so much content. But we've all got a bit of a hypocritical side, so we can allow a little wiggle room if someone wants to bitch that modern Christmas is "about the wrong thing" but can't resist an 80-inch, 3rd-world-sweatshop-manufactured flatscreen TV from a giant, faceless corporation simply because it's on sale for the low, low Christmas price of $79.99. Clearly, our morality is awash in shades of grey.
The righteous may have trouble accepting it, but the crowds have spoken, and America's collective Christmas wish is more tinsel and less hymnals. And what better way to main-line that tinsel-feeling than glueing our eyes to the TV for a barage of low-budget holiday movies. Someone must be listening, or at least reading up on the focus-group results, because every year they churn out more and more of these mediocre holiday I-could-have-sworn-I've-seen-this-before formulaic rom-coms, and I'll be damned if they aren't getting marginally better each year.
The righteous may have trouble accepting it, but the crowds have spoken, and America's collective Christmas wish is more tinsel and less hymnals. And what better way to main-line that tinsel-feeling than glueing our eyes to the TV for a barage of low-budget holiday movies. Someone must be listening, or at least reading up on the focus-group results, because every year they churn out more and more of these mediocre holiday I-could-have-sworn-I've-seen-this-before formulaic rom-coms, and I'll be damned if they aren't getting marginally better each year.
If there's one truly important aspect left to Christmas in America, it's that it is inescapable, unavoidable and ubiquitous - but only in its basest form. If we want to dip out of a Greek Orthodox Christmas service, or stay away from a Catholic midnight mass or a Pentecostal Bible-group, easy enough. What we are all left with, what we are bound by and bombarded with, is neutered, palatable iconography - the snowflake, the santa hat, the tree, the snowman, the red satin bow. And from these ashes, this bric-a-brac, we have constructed a new Christmas, brick by brick, tv-movie by tv-movie, Starbucks seasonal latte by Starbucks seasonal latte. A Christmas full of perky, optimistic, doe-eyed 20-30 something girl-women. We watch them live, we watch them fall in love - we see them get kicked around, but they learn something and they always come out on top.
And they love Christmas. These characters live in a world that is obsessed with Christmas, a universe where 11 months of the year don't exist. It's a fabricated metaspace that radiates out from each individual movie and coheres into a singular mesh that encompasses the entire genre.
These are good-ish movies - good enough to do laundry to, almost good enough to sit through without an iPhone or laptop within arm's-reach. But it just wouldn't be Christmas without the endless loop they provide, each one flowing seamlessly into the next, giving us a festive audio-visual purgatory, a semi-permanent yuletide stasis in our living rooms, if just for one magical month. Join us, won't you, as we celebrate the season, and take part in the greatest holiday tradition of all - finding something we love complaining about.
And they love Christmas. These characters live in a world that is obsessed with Christmas, a universe where 11 months of the year don't exist. It's a fabricated metaspace that radiates out from each individual movie and coheres into a singular mesh that encompasses the entire genre.
These are good-ish movies - good enough to do laundry to, almost good enough to sit through without an iPhone or laptop within arm's-reach. But it just wouldn't be Christmas without the endless loop they provide, each one flowing seamlessly into the next, giving us a festive audio-visual purgatory, a semi-permanent yuletide stasis in our living rooms, if just for one magical month. Join us, won't you, as we celebrate the season, and take part in the greatest holiday tradition of all - finding something we love complaining about.
Merriest Christmastime,
- Over-Seasoned
