Christmas: It's Out of Hand
The day after Thanksgiving, I happened to need to pay a visit to Ikea, the Swedish furniture store. A bit of a nightmare, but not as bad as it could have been.
Yesterday, though, I visited Times Square with my brother-in-law and six-year-old nephew. (He happens to be my only nephew, and so I happily call him my favorite nephew in the world...but lately, he has wised up, and points out, "I'm your only nephew!")
The three of us braved the Toys-R-Us store in Times Square, an experience I won't willingly repeat. The store was packed with clutching, grabbing, consuming Americans; one couldn't move without bumping into someone happily snapping up a DVD of The Incredibles, picking up a handheld Nintendo device, or checking out the new Xbox. There's actually an in-store Ferris wheel there. Naturally, you had to buy tickets. And naturally, there was an hour wait, which meant that you'd have to shop for an hour before it was your turn to ride.
I get a little nauseous in such situations, so I left quickly.
It was the second time I'd become somewhat alarmed about the way we Americans approach Christmas. On Thanksgiving night, I watched The Polar Express with my nephew and my two nieces, who, coincidentally, happen to be my two favorite nieces in the world. For those of you lacking children or favorite nieces and nephews, it's an animated film about a little boy who doesn't believe in Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, he boards a train to the North Pole and visits the huge metropolis where Santa and the elves manufacture Christmas presents.
It's kind of a weird film. The largely-deserted North Pole turns out to be an unintentionally scary place, filled with ominous conveyor belts and pneumatic tubes and tunnels and trapdoors. It looks like a Soviety city that's been hit by a neutron bomb—an impression that is only slightly lessened by a huge midnight rally at which all the elves cheer the imminent appearance of Santa Claus, who is first seen as a monstrous shadow.
(At which point I turned to my mother and whispered, "Do you think Robert Zemeckis [the director] is familiar with the work of Leni Riefenstahl?")
Our little boy protagonist is finally convinced that Santa exists when the Great Man chooses him to receive the first present of Christmas.
What kind of message does this send to children? There's not a hint of spirituality in the film.
Well, let me take that back. There is spirituality, just not as one would normally think of it in a Christmas context. Nothing about Jesus, or being thankful, or family, or helping others.
Instead, the material has been elevated to the level of the spiritual. The act of receiving a gift has been transformed into a quasi-religious ritual. Santa Claus is a combination of Jesus and Hitler.
In Dickens' A Christmas Carol, we learn that there is no greater gift than the present. In The Polar Express, we learn that there is no greater gift than a present.
In Dickens, we learn that the greatest joy is giving. In The Polar Express, the greatest joy, the ultimate satisfaction, is receiving.
And in the United States, this "holiday season," as we have dubbed it, the greatest joy is buying...which was not unlike President Bush's advice to the nation after 9/11: Go shopping.
Doesn't the United States mean more than this? Isn't there some way to retake Christmas from the materialistic orgy of our vapid capitalist culture? Or are we really nothing more than what we buy?
