How Christmas Lost It’s Mojo
“Bah! Humbug…”
Christmas, somehow, is still getting a lot of enthusiasm when so many of us are pretty over it. There are basically like two types of people now. The ones who are over it and the ones who are baffled by those of us who are over it and continue to shove it down everybody’s throat. Personally, I’m over it, if you haven’t guessed already, I was over it years ago.
Which, I agree, is sad. People call me Scrooge and say ‘bah, humbug’ when I’m around and it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I own it. Yup, that’s me. Christmas once held its magic. I loved it. I miss the wonder of it and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get that back because Christmas has seriously lost its mojo man.
I’ve noticed that young people and kids aren’t nearly as excited about Christmas as I was at that young age and they aren’t nearly as excited about Christmas as their Gen X or boomer parents. It’s the Gen X moms, mostly, I hear it from them the most about how much they absolutely love Christmas and they don’t understand where the magic went or why everybody else is dragging their feet.
Buy, buy, buy
The youngsters are seeing the lack of mojo and they’re pretty ‘ho hum’ about it. They recognize that the entire holiday has been hijacked by the mega-corporations and the mega-conglomerates who just see us as the cash spending cattle that we are and who are doing anything and everything they can to squeeze every last cent out of us by selling us an endless amount of useless shit. Aggressive marketing is partially to blame for this disaster. They slather us with bells and music so they can manipulate us emotionally into doing one thing and one thing only. Spending money. They don’t care if we have money or not, they’re happy to put us into debt and so the yoke of endless burdensome consumerism is partially to blame for it and it’s somewhat annoying when our loved ones entirely go for it.
Black Friday is a month long now, apparently, and the deals aren’t even good anymore. The stuff used to be so cheap it was worth trampling old ladies and yanking things from the weak clutches of small children. But now we never hear the end of it. Black Friday deals are showing up in August and it’s so old. We get it, you just want our money.
It’s not exciting anymore
Even still, Christmas could still hold some of the magic, I had decided if it wasn’t lacking one seriously important factor. Anticipation. There’s no anticipation with Christmas anymore. The opposite is entirely true. What is the opposite of anticipation? Suffocation? Yeah, that sounds about right. When I was a kid the anticipation really did it for me, I was so excited while anticipating it that I could barely sleep for a week or so leading up to it now I just want it to go away.
“Anticipation is like drugs without the drugs”
Anticipation puts excitement into things. Sex, for example, is lot better when you’re anticipating it. Anticipation builds exciting tension. It’s like drugs without the drugs. Anticipation can make pretty mediocre things seem pretty great just because people anticipate it. It’s really the only reason that Cabbage Patch Kids were as popular as they were in the 80’s. People anticipated a toy that was just a doll with a unique name and identity because they were honestly kind of ugly but it was the excitement and anticipation that really sold it.
When I was a kid the anticipation really made Christmas great. When the excitement for it built, the Christmas mojo flowed but now it’s gone. There’s no anticipation because Christmas is already there. In your face, all the time, for nearly three months. We can’t get excited for it because it’s right there, in our faces, all the fucking time. I know you’re probably thinking, ‘you already said that part, that sentence was redundant.’ I know it was redundant but you wanna know what else is extremely redundant by now?! FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!
Stores start selling decorations before Halloween has come and gone and they start piping Christmas music over the speakers starting in November. Most of us haven’t even had a chance to digest and pass the bird yet before someone is trying to put up the Christmas tree or watch a stale predictable Christmas movie. Can we at least finish our pie first? Nope. We have to hit the throttle on Christmas as soon as humanly possible.
Holiday CPR
I know some of you love Christmas but haven’t you noticed that lack of magic? Haven’t you noticed how quickly it’s losing all of its mojo? The solution isn’t to do more of it and to get it going sooner. All around me, I see Christmas lovers trying to perform CPR on this dead holiday because they’re trying to get more and more out of something that’s already been murdered. If the horse is lying on the ground and dying, you don’t get more out of the horse by hitting it and trying to force it to its feet. ‘Time to pull that fucking sleigh again, we need some more goddamn holiday cheer around here.” You have to give the horse some time to recover.
There are two things that would help give Christmas some of its mojo back. At least for me. The first is that we should wait, at least a couple of weeks before any decorations go up. Let some of that anticipation build again.
“You can stop telling all of us how much you love Christmas. We already know.”
Ladies, I’m mostly talking to you. Some of you seriously need to chill with Christmas. Wait a couple of weeks before you decorate and for God’s sake don’t play Christmas music for weeks and weeks on end. If you want to listen to it when you’re by yourself, knock yourselves out but please, for the love of God, give the rest of us a break. I know you love it, that’s fine, I don’t care but put on some headphones. I know you probably want us to enjoy it with you but for the love of God, we’re not going to do that until you give it a break.
If you waited awhile and let some of that anticipation build again, Christmas would get some of its mojo back and a lot more of us would be smiling when we’re putting the tree up instead of dragging our feet and praying for the moment that it ends. Christmas is so much better when everyone is going for it but we can’t go for it when we’re busy suppressing the urge to scream.
But you won’t, will you? You won’t wait awhile. You won’t give a couple of weeks and just let Christmas wait in the wings in anticipation. You’ll just keep forcing it onto us and making it insufferable while you loudly declare how much you love Christmas.
You don’t have to tell us, we know. There are a lot of things that I love but it’s because I let myself become hungry for them. I love ice cream but I don’t eat it that often because when I do eat it, it’s amazing. This is all I’m asking. For us to treat amazing things this way. If I ate ice cream every damn day, I’d really start to hate it. The solution isn’t to eat more and more ice cream, the solution is less.
The other thing that would give Christmas some of its mojo back is if there was less of it. We don’t need the entire world littered with lights and crappy decorations. We don’t need to listen to Christmas music every waking moment. We don’t need to go shopping every damn day, make cookies all the time, eat gingerbread around the clock, make Christmas cards and all the other endless amounts of shit. And for God’s sake, we don’t need elf on a shelf. Throw that shit away. If we kept it to a few lights, a tree, stockings and some Christmas cookies, that would be nice instead of this red and green tsunami that we are forced to swim through year after year.
Elf in the trash can
Okay, seriously, have you read what’s on the back of that elf on the shelf book? Apparently, it started as a way for parents to ensure their kids were obedient. They’d set the elf on a shelf and tell the kids that the elf was reporting directly to Santa so they better be good, goddammit, or this little bastard is going to snitch.
Ah yes, what a charming tradition. Let’s lie to the children about getting gifts from a mythical fat dude and then further that lie with a little disapproving blue-eyed doll. What a charming way to keep your kids in line, with fear. I guess religion is taking a break. Jesus can take a coffee break, unless, of course, he’s Mormon. Seriously though, this is the purpose of this thing. “Uh oh, kiddo, the elf saw what you just did, he’s going to tell Santa ALL about it.”
One more thing
I did think of one thing that would give Christmas its mojo back. Taking care of those that need to be taken care of. Instead of wasting our time buying shit we don’t need for people who don’t want or need it or spending all this time decorating, why not turn it into the season of charity and positive regard for our fellow humans because Lord knows we need some of that really fucking bad these days.
We all need to feel better about ourselves and if we did more good things for people in need, it would help us accomplish that. Christmas was built on the values of doing things for other people and Lord knows that’s been six feet in the cold ground for quite some time now, what we have instead is a hellscape of consumerism.
Okay okay, that might be entirely fair or accurate, there are still good people, they’re everywhere actually but I don’t think anyone can deny how good will toward others has severely eroded and Christmas now just seems to mostly be a reflection of how far we go to look like we’re good people when we most of us could do better, myself included. There you go, there’s your Mr. Rogers moment, you’re welcome. Remember kids, everyone is your neighbor.
The story of how Christmas was saved
I know you Christmas fanatics out there aren’t going to let up. I know you’re just going to keep forcing this onto the rest of us. I’m realistic. Think of it though…
“Hey, how was your Christmas?”
“It was amazing, possibly the best ever!”
“Wow, really? What made it so good?”
“We decided to keep it simple, hold back and let some excitement for it build again. We waited a few extra weeks to get the decorations up including the tree and instead of buying a ton of gifts we found a family in need and helped them out. Best of all, we took that stupid goddamn elf on a shelf and ritualistically burned it! It was SO therapeutic. Everyone enjoyed Christmas so much more instead of just tolerating me while I smothered them with it.”
“Wow, that does sound amazing, I think my family and the rest of humanity should follow suit. Christmas is going to be fun again because this way, people will have a chance to feel some of the anticipation for it.”
And before you knew it, this new Christmas tradition of chilling the fuck out caught fire and Christmas was saved from the clutches of Gen X moms. The end.
