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December 2000

Staff Editorial
There is hope in an era of Bush.
by the PERSPECTIVE staff

UC Endorsement
Steve Smith and James Coleman are the liberal's choice.
by the PERSPECTIVE staff

Canadian Comrades
It really is better up there.
by Danny Schlozman

Triumph or Tragedy?
Clinton's legacy is one of calculated compromise.
by Jeffrey Theodore

Buying Survival
Africa needs money, now.
by Ved Lekic and Alexandra Neuhaus-Follini

Pharmitas
Pharmaceutical companies fund Harvard research.
by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal

Students for What?
Folic acid has a hidden message.
by Shelby Meyerhoff

Greens Take Root
PERSPECTIVE talks to Cliff Ginn.
by Dev Purkayastha

A Year to Remember
A year from Seattle, the WTO protests go on.
by Bob Elliott

Cry Freedom
America's ideal of freedom is questionable.
by Nikhil Jaikumar

Introspective
In Defense of Money
by Brad Hershbein

Salmagundi

The Back Page
Keeping Christmas
by Julia Silvis

By Julia Silvis

Christmas, despite its warm and fuzzy image, is a holiday people love to hate. As soon as Walgreens puts up its fake snow and paper snowflakes (at a date which seems to be inching closer to Independence Day every year), articles decrying American consumerism are dusted off, a few references to the newest electronic gizmo or online shopping are inserted, and these articles are published with reliability that puts Santa to shame. These articles portray Americans as heartless, hollow goblins, who, zombie-like, spend their ways through November and December, only to wake up in January to extra pounds and huge credit card bills. But these cantankerous laments are not only contrary to the spirit of Christmas, they also sell Americans short, underestimating our ability to create and hold fast to our own traditions.

As an example of this Christmas-under-seige attitude, The Boston Globe, when reviewing How the Grinch Stole Christmas remarked that the Grinch is “not all wrong when he decries the avarice that has turned Christmas in Whoville into an orgy of gift buying and competitive lighting displays.” The same pages that declare Christmas vapid advertise the millions of things you can buy to please that special someone, ingratiate yourself with your boss, or win over the in-laws. These editorials cannot accuse their readers of being avaricious pigs, so usually it is the advertisers who get blamed for sucking the meaning out of Christmas. More precisely, rather than creating a vacuum, the advertisers give a new, different meaning to the holiday (the only vacuum they are interested in is the one in your wallet). The meaning they give to Christmas is one that hinges on spending as much as you can-you won't have to use words to express your emotions, but can just tell your girlfriend you think she is sexy by giving her leather thong underwear.

The idea of our culture being embedded in advertisements is somewhat repugnant. It is particularly offensive to see the wholesale purchase our common values in holiday advertisements, which play on our best impulses for their own gain. Fundamentally, we buy gifts because we want to express gratitude, appreciation, love-positive-noble feelings (except if you are sucking up to your boss so that you can get that promotion). These blood-sucking capitalists have no respect for these purer urges, the argument goes, and prey upon us when we are vulnerable. Advertising is inherently built on the creation of unhappiness-commercials seek to convince people that they are inadequate and unhappy and that a new SUV with five-wheel drive will make them happy. In that it strives to create unhappiness, I think that advertising is not good. But such is the transformative power of Christmas that sometimes an advertiser's innovation becomes part of the tradition that people want to see saved from the wolves of capitalism.

For example, Rudolph, recognized by sociologists as the twentieth century's only contribution to Christmas lore, was a marketing gimmick devised by Macy's during the Great Depression. However, for every Rudolph, ten commercials throw in some mistletoe to crassly sell breathmints. Such associations attack our beliefs and undermine the holiday, don't they?

We all like to think of ourselves as savvy consumers, the emptor who heeded the caveat. And although advertising works in a subliminal way that we can hardly control, that is no explanation. When was the last time you went out and bought something because you saw it advertised during “Felicity?” Blaming the advertising and retail industries for the breakdown of Christmas assumes that people have the collective mental power of lemmings. People are smarter than we give them credit for. We can control our spending. While there may be an unhealthy cultural pressure to give unneeded gifts that end up in the back of the garage, I think that we are capable of breaking out of even this purachasing squeeze.

I disagree with another assumption of the cantankerous columnists: that Christmas has lost its meaning. I may be an idiotic romantic, coming from a privileged background in suburbia, but I think that people manage to find some redeeming aspect of Christmas. It is regrettable that we have to fight against forces of capitalism to find it, but I think that we can.

So what is the meaning that we have to search for? From individual reflections, to family rituals, to community events, I think that Americans keep Christmas in their own ways, but that ultimately, Christmas can be distilled into an celebration of selflessness, of giving, and of coming together to witness the miraculous, be it a birth or the beauty of winter or the love of family. All the people I know celebrate in a way unique to their family, whether it be by writing letters to one another or by going to church on Christmas Eve or burning the tree the day after Christmas. That this celebration does not necessarily fall on December 25 points to the fact that each celebration is customized, and that Christmas is on an arbitrary date anyway.

Christmas was created by the Roman Catholic Church to compete with two pagan holidays. One was the main holiday of Mithraism, which celebrated the birth of the sun-god on December 25, the other was the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which was a ten-day long festival during which slaves and masters traded places (for a short while) and drank lots of wine. The culmination of the festivities was a grand feast, held on December 25. In the early years of Christianity, there was a lot of argument about when Christ was born, as this day is not explicitly stated in the Bible. People were trying to mathematically calculate the day based on complicated star charts and the like when some bright bishop decided that there would be more Christians if they didn't feel left out of the parties in December. And thus Christ's birthday came to be December 25, which is certainly not when he was born. (Most likely, he was born in May. When the angel Gabriel announces Christ's birth to the shepherds, they are “watching their flocks by night.” Only new-born lambs require this extra protection from being eaten.) Over the course of competition with its riotous heathen counterpart, the holiday came to have greater significance than Easter, which is theologically more important.

Continuing this precedent, my dad, sister, stepmom, and I sit down every year to schedule our Christmas for some time over the break when we will all be in town. Despite the contrived date of our holiday, it is still meaningful to us.

While our individual celebrations are wonderful and valuable, they would be empty if we all shut ourselves inside with our little rituals and didn't share anything outide our circle of family or close friends. There is something to be said for community celebrations and traditions, whether they are the Charlie Brown Christmas special or a midnight mass or an office group taking the all-night stint at a homeless shelter. Sharing a ritual allows people to validate it.

So to all the mournful Christmas naysayers, I say take heart. There is much wrong with commercialism, but we are more self-aware and reflective than you give us credit for. Perhaps, by realizing that nobody has the power to dictate what Christmas is to each one of us, we can reclaim it in our minds and columnists' editorials. Enjoy your holiday!

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu