I hate Christmas. Have for years. See nothing in it but mandated joy, the time of the year when the full weight and firepower of the industrial-entertainment complex (and, let's face it, the gubmint) is lined up on the side of the awful people and their insistence on uniform pleasantness and shallow joy.
I was in the laundromat the other day, and Anne Murray was playing. Anne fucking Murray. I'm not even in Canada, let alone in 1988. I was on hold with the bank--yuletide joy--and they were playing a sultry jazz version of Winter Wonderland. Slowing the song down doesn't make it better, just longer.
It's not that I hate joy, pleasantness, or good tidings. Rather, I suffer a visceral rejection of insistence. Christ, what's wrong with subtlety?
Which brings me to my point. I spent the last few weeks in France and England. And lord knows the English should be truly insufferable over Christmas: few people take more satisfaction in conformity and enforced communion in pleasantness (through provincial gossip and badgering where available, through the State's 'soft hand' where needed). True fact: the song The World Turned Upside Down, apparently played when the British surrendered at Yorktown, was written about the suppression of good ole English Christmas traditions by Cromwell. Possibly the Lord Protector's only redeeming act.
And Paris is the capital of the haute bourgeoisie and their particularly centralized consumption: Galeries Lafayette, Le Bon Marché, and the trashier BHV.[1] France is the we-don't-care-about-christ-just-consumption Christian nation par excellence. Surely they must make Christmas unbearable, right?
Wrong! In both, it was much more enjoyable. Still about consuming, which isn't really the problem for me. But, oddly, less insistent. Subtler. You can be in their world, not of their world, and they won't try to force a change. Maybe I'm just not as used to their Christmas songs, so they don't grate. But I think it went deeper.
Christmas in America has to mean something. It has to bring the family together. Has to make us all feel in harmony. Or something. There is a desperation about it. In England and France, they didn't seem to care that it mean anything, and it meant more as a result.[2]
Blah.... Here is a song appropriately forlorn for the season.
Also, same, but different:
[1] trashier? This year the theme was Noël Québecois.
[2] Counter: England is the land that brought us Do they know it's Christmas, amongst the most offensive and condescending songs ever recorded.
I was in the laundromat the other day, and Anne Murray was playing. Anne fucking Murray. I'm not even in Canada, let alone in 1988. I was on hold with the bank--yuletide joy--and they were playing a sultry jazz version of Winter Wonderland. Slowing the song down doesn't make it better, just longer.
It's not that I hate joy, pleasantness, or good tidings. Rather, I suffer a visceral rejection of insistence. Christ, what's wrong with subtlety?
Which brings me to my point. I spent the last few weeks in France and England. And lord knows the English should be truly insufferable over Christmas: few people take more satisfaction in conformity and enforced communion in pleasantness (through provincial gossip and badgering where available, through the State's 'soft hand' where needed). True fact: the song The World Turned Upside Down, apparently played when the British surrendered at Yorktown, was written about the suppression of good ole English Christmas traditions by Cromwell. Possibly the Lord Protector's only redeeming act.
And Paris is the capital of the haute bourgeoisie and their particularly centralized consumption: Galeries Lafayette, Le Bon Marché, and the trashier BHV.[1] France is the we-don't-care-about-christ-just-consumption Christian nation par excellence. Surely they must make Christmas unbearable, right?
Wrong! In both, it was much more enjoyable. Still about consuming, which isn't really the problem for me. But, oddly, less insistent. Subtler. You can be in their world, not of their world, and they won't try to force a change. Maybe I'm just not as used to their Christmas songs, so they don't grate. But I think it went deeper.
Christmas in America has to mean something. It has to bring the family together. Has to make us all feel in harmony. Or something. There is a desperation about it. In England and France, they didn't seem to care that it mean anything, and it meant more as a result.[2]
Blah.... Here is a song appropriately forlorn for the season.
Also, same, but different:
[1] trashier? This year the theme was Noël Québecois.
[2] Counter: England is the land that brought us Do they know it's Christmas, amongst the most offensive and condescending songs ever recorded.
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