Well, here we are again. 2022 is drawing to a close. Not gonna lie, the past few years have been psychologically brutal for many, if not most of us. You know all the reasons why. One could make the argument that things are getting worse now, not better: There’s a trifecta of viruses going around – the resurgence of COVID, the plain old flu, and “RSV” whatever that is. There are shortages of multiple medications. Children’s Tylenol is the new toilet paper. Inflation has soared, even as Jerome Powell and crew, woefully late to the party, continue to jack up interest rates. The resulting, inevitable widening of the so-called “wealth gap” continues to stoke societal bifurcation and thinly, if at all veiled class warfare. And let’s be honest, how many of us could even have placed Ukraine on a map before February of this year? Yet the atrocities there are depicted on the TV news night after night, stirring recollections of this old-timer’s youth, when one might have asked, who among us could have placed Vietnam on a map prior to the Johnson Administration’s escalation of that war?
And yet…
I see green shoots. Call
it the spirit of Christmas, if you will, or perhaps it’s just a reflection of very
real collective exhaustion; but I am seeing signs, some barely perceptible, of
an emerging kinder, gentler time. I
think – I really believe – we are witnessing something akin to a fragile truce
in the Culture Wars. I first noticed this in the political realm. [Spoiler
alert – stop reading now if you’re going to get all twisted about political opinions.] Several weeks ago, one of my far-right Facebook friends, IRL a friend from high
school who is a bona fide alt-right conspiracy theorist type, posted that Donald
Trump had finally lost his vote. My friend may be Captain Obvious at this
point, but it was a notable concession nonetheless. At the other end of the
spectrum, when was the last time you read anything about “the Squad?” It feels
to me as though Bernie and AOC and the rest of the extremist lefties are slowly
fading into relative obscurity. We can, and no doubt will, argue about where
the delineation lies, but in broad, general terms, I believe we are witnessing a
renewed appreciation of the merits of centrism, perhaps of moderation in all
things. There have even been a couple of instances of bi-partisan cooperation in
Congress lately, including the recent passage of the “Respect for Marriage Act.”
While hardly a Kumbaya moment, it’s been
years, it seems, since we’ve seen anything other than hard-core party line cement-shoes
votes.
Outside of the purely political realm, I have recently been
noticing something quite remarkable: People are freely saying “Merry Christmas”
again. Now, before you react negatively to that, hear me out. For the past
several years, there has been a perceptible, just-below-the-surface rancor
around holiday greetings. And let’s be
real, the fact that there would be rancor about this particular thing (that
being, ostensibly, expressions of good will toward others) is disappointing at
best, and clearly reflective of societal dysfunction. So, it went like this: some
time back, “Merry Christmas” fell from favor, as it was seen by some as excluding
those who do not celebrate Christmas. “Happy Holidays” became the politically
correct alternative. So far, so good, whatever floats your boat.
But then, as with so many other things in the past few years
(see also: COVID vaccines), holiday greetings became weaponized, politically
charged. There were only two sides, two extremes. You had to choose. You were a
Merry Christmas person or a Happy Holidays person, setting aside for the moment
that there have always been Happy Hanukkah people and Happy Kwanzaa people and Merry
Festivus people and non-celebrants and all manner of others; this, like
everything else in recent American life, became an angry, bilateral battle of wits.
And so was born the ridiculous notion of a “War on Christmas.” During this ugly
time, nobody seemed willing to accept a well-intended greeting at face value. The
words, when spoken, were spat out as though gauntlets were being thrown down: “Happy
Holidays” was delivered with a glare. “Merry Christmas” was returned as though
with an unspoken “fuck you.” Absurd, combative memes abounded.
But recently, seemingly from out of nowhere, a level of
warmth began to re-emerge. At first I thought it was a fluke, but the pattern
repeated: I came face-to-face with someone in daily life – a supermarket
cashier, a neighbor in a parking lot – who simply smiled (and to be clear, I am
distinguishing a smile from a grimace) and said “Merry Christmas!” And in those
moments, I was actually taken aback by what would have been, at any point in
the first fifty years of my life, an utterly unremarkable encounter. It was… nice. Nothing more and nothing less.
Not having lived under a rock for the past decade, I of
course began questioning all of this. Yes, I’m a privileged white male, culturally
Christian but non-religious. What if I’d
worn other shoes? What if I were Jewish,
or Muslim, or Seinfeldian? Would I have
/ should I have been offended? And the
answer was clearly a resounding “no.”
Because – and this is perhaps the most important part – it was clear to
me in each case that these “Merry Christmas” wishes were delivered without a
trace of irony or challenge. They were simple and genuine expressions of good will.
Only the most unobservant or
thin-skinned person of a different belief system would have found reason to
take offense.
So am I suggesting that “Happy Holidays” is now passe? Not at all.
In fact, it may surprise some young folks to learn that “Happy Holidays”
and “Season’s Greetings” holiday cards are hardly a new thing – they were just
as common fifty years ago as they are today.
They just hadn’t been twisted into swords in some bogus Culture
War. When the evil Red Baron called out to
Snoopy, “Merry Christmas, mein friend!” he was calling a truce. Nobody demanded a generic
rewrite. Life went on. People smiled.
Let’s keep smiling. Merry
Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Jolly Everything. It’s all [meant to be] good. You are all [presumed to be] good. I wish you the very best as we move forward into what will hopefully be a much better, happier 2023.
