Tuesday, December 3, 2013

UPDATE- The Complainist vs. Christmas

It has been a full month since the complainist completed its great work: an exegesis of Fifty Shades of Grey, the most popular novel in the history of Kindle.

We are happy to report that, since completing the first draft of this great work here on the internets, we have edited it into a lean, precise 200 page manuscript and are pursuing literary agents who might care to represent this book. Just kidding! That hasn't happened at all. It has only happened in a sort of imaginary way, although I still hold out hope that I may get my act together enough to ride EL's coattails all the way to some sort of pity-project book deal. You never know!

Ana Steele's adventures will continue on Christmas Day, when Chapter 1 of whatever the next book is called will be posted here for your reading pleasure / displeasure. Why? Simple: I must face the fact that I have nothing to offer the world besides the quality of my own scorn. When a person has but a single talent, it is ungrateful not to put it to good use.

Until then, it is December, and I am at war against Christmas, as I am every December. The War on Christmas is not new. Please note this oft-overlooked section of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with Christmas. But in your existing society, Christmas is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a holiday, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any holiday for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your Christmas. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

Controversial words! Controversial, but important to keep in mind this holiday season.

But this year, the War on Christmas faces a particularly nasty adversary: former small-time politician / hockey enthusiast Sarah Palin. 

Official copy reprinted below: 


In her New York Times bestsellers Going Rogue and America by Heart,Sarah Palin revealed the strong Christian faith that has guided her life and family. In Good Tidings and Great Joy she calls for bringing back the freedom to express the Christian values of the season. She asserts the importance of preserving Jesus Christ in Christmas—in public displays, school concerts, pageants, and our expressions to one another other—and laments the over-commercialization and homogenization of Christmas in today's society.
Interwoven throughout are personal memories and family traditions, as well as more than a dozen family photos, which illustrate the reasons why the celebration of Jesus Christ's nativity is the centerpiece of her faith. Palin believes it is imperative that we stand up for our beliefs before the element of faith in a glorious and traditional holiday like Christmas is marginalized and ignored. She also encourages readers to see what is possible when we unite in defense of our religious convictions and ignore the politically correct Scrooges seeking to take Christ out of Christmas. Good Tidings and Great Joy is a call to action to openly celebrate the joys of Christianity, and say Merry Christmas to one another.

That's right, folks! In order to fight the over-commercialization and homogenization, Sarah Palin is selling a book for money and encouraging us all to all celebrate Christmas the same way she does. This makes basically as much sense as any American politician / right-wing semi-pundit ever makes, so good on ya, I guess. 

But here is what I'm saying to you: 
It is not enough to secularize Christmas. Rather, we must attack it from the roots! In the words of the great Alfred Jarry, "We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well."

Correct!

But the biggest joke in all of this is that Christmas is the absolute most popular thing in the world, and everyone basically loves it, and if we stopped spending billions of dollars every December on PlayStations or whatever the economy would probably collapse and and so our love of Christmas is probably all that's standing between us and some kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape. The best we can hope for, then, in this war on Christmas, are moral victories, and also if we can make some people mad by saying "holidays" instead of "Christmas," I say, good!

Here is the part in this post where I was going to invite you to steal a copy of Palin's book from your drugstore or whatever, and then send it to me so that I could make sure that those of us in the anti-Christmas movement could thwart her attack on her forces. But then I decided it would be poor of me to encourage you to steal books because what if you got in trouble? And what if I told you were to send the copy of the book you stole, and you were able to figure out the location of my Arctic bunker, from which I am conducting forays to learn the exact location of Santa's workshop? 

It's all too dangerous. Also, though EL James and Sarah Palin are both terrible writers and deserving targets, I need to branch out, lest I give anyone the impression that I have a particular problem with women who are terrible writers. I want it to be clear that I am hostile to the undeservingly popular in general! 

So please: if you care to play along, share with me some of your most-hated Christmas things so that you might fuel the efforts of this great war. Books, movies, so on. The only exception, in my mind, is Die Hard. Now that is a heartwarming Christmas movie. Oh, and A Peanuts Christmas. That's ok. 

Happy holidays, Sarah Palin!

1 comment:

mkeagle said...

1. Virtually all Christmas music (unless it's from A Claymation Christmas), particularly the kind that starts playing in November.

2. Christmas trees/lights appearing the day after Thanksgiving. I get that turkey day was uncharacteristically late this year, but come on. Finish your leftovers before you put up the damn wreath.

3. Target. I find going to Target mildly unpleasant on a good day, but Target in December is a special level of the inferno. Avoid at all costs.