Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Have yourself a contrived Christmas

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1998 | 11:48 a.m.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and, naturally, that angers some people. I don't mean the neo-Scrooges and latter-day bah-humbuggers; in fact, the people I'm thinking of consider themselves the exact opposite. They're sincere, earnest people, eager to be touched by the spirit of the season. And every year they're prevented from doing so by -- you guessed it -- the commercialization of Christmas.

Every bank-lobby Christmas tree that goes up the day after Thanksgiving, every store's tinselly display of cheap holiday junk (the perfect stocking stuffer!), every food-court Santa charging $10 a flashbulb pop to briefly traumatize your kid, is another reminder of just how deeply modern culture has dug its fake Claus into the holiday. This is said to be a terrible development.

Really? I disagree, and not merely because they taught us at Critic at Large school to disagree with everything. I like the jangle of modern Christmas. Fake reindeer! Plastic yard nativities! Red paper bells! If it weren't for the commercialization of Christmas, we wouldn't have huge inflatable Santas atop Sahara Avenue buildings, nor grocery clerks wearing elf headgear.

Don't read any ironic stance-taking into this, nor some campy affectation. I mean it. I've come to think that it's precisely the supposedly commercial trappings of Christmas that cue our festive response, that stir what remains of our ho ho ho. Come on, admit it: The appearance of cardboard Santa cutouts or candy canes painted on shop windows gives you a pleasant feeling; the annual ritual of buying gifts for loved ones connects you to happy holidays of the past.

Despite years of watching "The Little Drummer Boy," I don't really consider Christmas an essentially religious holiday. Everyone knows it's probably not when Jesus was born, that it's more like "Christ's Birthday (Observed)." The church assigned Dec. 25 that honor sometime around the fourth century A.D., as much to usurp Roman and pagan celebrations occurring at that time as to mark the infant's birth.

I'm not saying commercial zest should replace Christmas spirit, of course. Like the Grinch, I understand "maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store -- maybe, perhaps, it means just a little bit more." But that doesn't mean the reverse holds true: that if it does come from a store, it must mean a little bit less.

However, speaking for that point of view, please welcome writer Bill McKibben. He's the author of "Hundred Dollar Holiday," a modest proposal to yank Christmas out of its secular bog by spending less and meaning more.

"You meet very few people who think that the way we do Christmas at the moment is exactly the way it should be," he recently told an interviewer. Well, by golly, he's probably right. You'll also meet very few people who think that the way we do Halloween at the moment is exactly the way it should be. Or the way we do government at the moment. Or the way we do sequels to popular talking-pig movies at the moment. In fact, the way we do practically anything at the moment is up for question.

What he's presumably getting at is that the mall-walking, crowd-plowing, what-do-I-buy-for-granny stress of the modern holiday has squeezed the fun and meaning from it. "You shouldn't devote a 12th or a 24th of every year to something you're really not enjoying," he adds. Again McKibben has a point; the next time I have two unenjoyable weeks at work, I'm quitting.

People seem to agree with McKibben. According to a poll cited on the Salon web magazine, only 29 percent of us say the holiday leaves us feeling joyful. Maybe that's because constant carping about the lost meaning of Christmas has prompted us to think we should be miserable.

My own observations are somewhat more holly-jolly. Once you get out of the mall parking lots -- where, let's face it, joyousness will never reign -- people seem measurably more decent this time of year. They hold doors for the package-laden; they'll chat amiably in the unmoving line at Sears; they'll smile indulgently when your children bump into them. Commercialization hasn't ruined that.

Anyway, the cat is out of Santa's bag. Christmas is commercial and it ain't going back, despite a hundred $100 Christmases or a hundred thousand. It's fine for McKibben to suggest family outings instead of elaborate gift-giving ("We go out and spread birdseed, bread crumbs in the park. That's a Franciscan tradition"). But Franciscan tradition will be a tough sell on Christmas morning.

Buying stuff is one of the modern American's purest forms of elf-expression. That's the sort of people we are today; we're not the medieval serfs wassailing in the halls of the master's castle whom McKibben celebrates in his book. (Good thing, too -- I can mall-walk just fine, but I never learned to serf.)

Anyway, those who believe commercialization has corrupted the holiday obviously didn't see my 5-year-old in action last year, when he warmly thanked his great grandmother for giving him a pair of socks or something that didn't even bear the logo of his favorite Nickelodeon character. Despite receiving some fairly expensive toys purchased in crowded malls decorated with large plastic candy canes, he had the proper spirit. Watching him, so did I.