Category Archives: Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the bah humbugs

December 18, 2015 8:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been on a theater kick for the past couple of years and we are right now at the tail end of the 2015 Fall theater season in Houston.  I just have to say that the theater scene in Houston keeps getting better and better all the time.  Houston has gained a national reputation for its fine dining choices and I can see a time when it gains a name as a live theater mecca as well.

But anyways, some of the local troupes that I follow put on Christmas and holiday related plays to cap the year.  Stark Naked Theater put on “Ho Ho Humbug 2.0“, Bayou City Theatrics put on “The 12 dates of Christmas“, and the Classical Theater Company put on “A Christmas Carol“.

The last is of course the classic Charles Dickens story and I wanted to see it as I’ve never seen it performed live but the other two were contemporary stories set in or near present day America and dealt mainly with how we perceive and deal with this time of year.

For better or for worse, people in this country have come to associate this holiday season with certain things.

  • Religion of course.  This is a christian holiday and at one time this was a predominantly christian nation.  Whether you agree with it or not you can’t deny that there is an influence there.
  • Traditions that bind us to certain European countries where Americans originated from
  • Commercialism which is more of an american tradition.

From the late 19th century till about the Mid 20th century this was the Christmas season (the term “holiday season” wasn’t in widespread use).  Government, Church, and commercial interests helped spread and foster the season and developed it into what we came to know as Christmas time.

But then in the mid 20th century we began to see this change over time.  People started to notice that this time of year didn’t resonate with everyone.

One of the earliest examples was the Peanuts Christmas TV special where one of the characters proclaimed that Christmas was a racket and controlled by some company “back East”.  This illustrated the disconnect that some people had always felt around this time of year.

Mass media began to notice that besides the Christian majority that there were people from other faiths in this country and that more and more new Americans were arriving from non western European lands.

At the same time, commercial interests were moving to leverage the holiday for all it was worth.  Store displays are now put up as much as two months in advance and even though there has been some consumer backlash over this, they don’t seem to care that much.

I thought about all these points as I attended the plays I mentioned up above.

Christmas Carol is of course the original story about someone who has disconnected from the holiday.  Scrooge had consciously made a decision to set himself apart from humanity.  The spirits show him that this was not always the case and that he still had time to fix this condition.

12 dates of Christmas was a story about a woman who loses her fiance at Thanksgiving time and for the next 12 months has disastrous dates with various men.  She reflects on how “family centered” that the holidays can be and how single people can feel ostracized around the holiday season.

Ho ho Humbug 2.0 was the most poignant of the three.  A writer, that hates the holidays, needs a temporary job to make his rent and by accident winds up playing a store Santa Claus.  Through some soliloquies the writer explains that even as a child he had never connected to Christmas and that he felt that this job was a farce.

As the play progresses and he interacts with his co-workers and with the customers, he comes to see that Christmas means so much more than the commercialism, the decorations and customs, and even the religious aspect.  Christmas had a distinct meaning to everyone he met.  In the end he doesn’t embrace all the aspects of the holiday but he comes to find a way that he can celebrate the season and make it his own.

I think that last point is the most important.  I see some people decrying the holidays as being too commercial, too religious, too superficial.  But then I look around at people from other parts of the world cheerfully celebrating the holiday and pretty much just ignoring the bits that they don’t like or understand.

For example, Christmas is huge in Japan for the gifting aspect.  Not many Christians there.  I know some Jewish families that put up Christmas trees and focus in on the gift giving and celebration aspects.  Last year I was on vacation in the tropics at this time of year and I saw some of the locals decorating their hut with a Christmas tree.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you need to make the holiday your own in order to enjoy it.  Most people enjoy the season out of habit.  But for those that find the season to be a chore or a bother, I think that if you look more closely that there is something there for you to enjoy as well.

 

Merry Christmas

Posted in: Christmas, consumerism, culture, current events, holidays, Houston, life in general, pop culture, theater, thought , Tagged: ,

Holiday traditions if and when appropriate

December 21, 2014 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I really don’t want to put the “Bah humbug” on the season.  I’m not the Scrooge type that wants to abolish holidays.  Really I don’t, but you have to admit that sometimes people go way overboard on all the traditions stuff.

I came back from vacation last week and didn’t recognize the neighborhood due to all the decorations on the front lawns.  The next morning before dawn I went out to run and amazingly at 5AM people had the decorations on?  For who?

All the hold music on phone systems are the same Christmas carols, not to mention the muzak in stores and even background music in offices.

Of course everything is Christmas themed.  It’s enough to make a person wince.

I’m perfectly fine celebrating the season.  I have no problem going to see friends and family and doing the traditions.  But let’s face facts.  Most of this other stuff, the lights, the music, the Christmas themed everything isn’t done for the Christmas spirit.  It’s done in the name of business.

The season is becoming inundated and overloaded for the sole purpose of selling things, and for making more money.  Come round July 4th or Halloween and the trappings may be different but the aim is the same.  Squeeze the public for as much money as possible.  Swamp and overload everything as much as possible with the appropriate theme and never mind if people are sick of it, keep pushing more.

The real shame of it is that it ruins the season by over selling it.  We risk the danger of people being turned off and becoming jaded over time and not wanting to celebrate the season as it is no longer special.

Come on guys, less is more.  We were happy when the decorations weren’t so elaborate.  When you had to find a living breathing choir of actual people to sing a carol or when you had to find the one and only Santa in one location in the mall and not 3 different Santas.

Like I said, I don’t propose to boycott Christmas or not celebrate but for my part I will keep the Season special by doing less and enjoying it more.

Posted in: activities, Christmas, holidays, seasons

The giving season

December 8, 2013 8:35 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve never been too big a fan of the whole gift giving thing for Christmas.  Not that I’m Scrooge mind you but individual people are hard to shop for.  Or maybe I don’t have the sense for determining what I should get for an individual.  I don’t know but in most cases it’s a chore for me.  Plus honestly I get this feeling like I’m being manipulated to buy things for people just because the retailers tell me I have to.

What I enjoy more is giving to charity groups and organizations.  The Houston food bank, Ripley house, the Houston Area Women’s Center and the star of hope shelter are local groups that I know are making a difference for people.  I feel my money makes a greater impact here than in other ways.

I also keep in mind some of my online groups that aren’t exactly charities but they do a lot of good just the same.  Groups like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and NPR are things that I enjoy and support.

If you find that you don’t know where to put your money, charity navigator is a great place to start looking.

But really the first and best step is to decide to break the monotonous process of just going to the mall and loading up things for a small group of people.  Give to a greater pool of people this season.  You will feel so much better for it.

Posted in: charity, Christmas

All I want for Christmas is a salary

December 4, 2013 7:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve noticed that some folks that I know won’t go to black Friday sales and will postpone shopping until the week before Christmas.

It’s not that they hate the maddening crowds or don’t like a bargains.  It’s that in the back of their minds they’re thinking about their paychecks and whether they’ll have a job by the end of December.

Being a salaried employee can be nerve-wracking at times.  Job security is a fleeting thing in the contemporary work place and the competitive nature of jobs can mean that you’re out in the middle of December looking for a job and that it’s going to be a lean Christmas.

So should employers take this into account when considering a dismissal?  Do they have a moral obligation to postpone firings till after the holidays?

Of course not.  The main focus of a business owner is to keep money coming into their business and to keep the paychecks flowing to those workers that are assets to the company.  Keeping people on for sentiments sake is fine but it drains money from the company and keeps your team from working at peak efficiency.

You have to remember that firings are typically not done on a whim or for capricious reasons.  Employees that are going to be fired usually have an established bad track record and that this is the last step of the process, not the first.

I do think that an appropriate step is to let a worker that is of dubious quality know that their job performance is not up to par before the holidays begin and that they are at risk of being dismissed in the near future.  They may decide to leave on their own or at least they can modify their holiday spending plans in advance.  I think that’s as much as an employer can do in this type of situation.

The only other thing I would add is that the employer has to take into the consideration the welfare of the rest of the company team that are doing their jobs well and that due to their efforts are entitled to their Happy Holidays.  Keeping bad employees on for sentiments sake is just harming everyone in the long run.

Posted in: business, Christmas, holidays, jobs