It’s Christmas time again, seems like just last year we celebrated it. Most of you don’t know this, but I am a curmudgeon when it comes to Christmas. I seem to notice the excessive commercialism surrounding the holiday. I loathe the commercialism. I loathe commercialism of a lot of the good things in this world.
When my wife first started dating me, we had some differences of opinion in celebrating Christmas. I wouldn’t decorate a Christmas tree, I felt…. I still feel that the Christmas tree symbolizes the commercialism of Christmas. I conceded to being less curmudgeonly if we had a real Christmas tree, decorated with handmade decorations, and a few commercial made ornaments that have special meaning. I have almost the entire line of Hallmark Keepsakes Star Trek line. I acquired them from my father, thus they have special meaning to me.
To encourage the feeling of Christmas cheer, I like to watch Christmas movies leading up to Christmas. We have a lot of family favourites – A Charlie Brown Christmas, Elf, It’s A Wonderful Life, both Miracle on 34th Street (1947 and 1994). I don’t like a lot of remakes but the remake of Miracle on 34th Street is as good as the original in my opinion.
The other issue I have come to about the commercialization of Christmas is the popularized visage of Santa Claus. Santa Claus in most of the world outside of North America is a genial fellow, not necessarily what we see as Santa in our media. What we recognize as Santa was popularized by Coca-Cola. Santa is now a corporate symbol.
Where am I going with this? This year we don’t have a Christmas tree, and the house isn’t very Christmasy. This isn’t a big deal to us, it probably is to many others, but we don’t need the trappings to celebrate.
I am of course writing this while watching A Miracle on 34th Street, the 1994 version, we have already watched the original version. We’ve also watched It’s a Wonderful Life. One of my personal favourites is Scrooge, with Alistair Sim, and the modern adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Scrooged with Bill Murray..
I don’t know the point I am trying to make but I was hoping to bring to light the commercialization of Christmas, and ask you to look at what it really means.
I hope that you enjoy your Mandarin Oranges in your stockings.
PS, it’s the end of the movie and I am sobbing with joy.