The Madness That Is American Christmas - "Tinsel" Excerpted From Salon

[hatrack]

EDIT

"Tinsel" explores the considerable gap between the Christmases most Americans have and the ecstatic holiday nirvana they long for. One of the three Frisco families that Stuever follows is the Parnells, specifically Tammie Parnell, a 44-year-old mother of two whose titanic drive has been insufficiently tapped by the (supposed) dream job of affluent stay-at-home mom. The overflow of her energy goes into a business she calls Two Elves With a Twist (the second elf quit a couple of years ago, but who needs her?), which puts up interior Christmas decorations for McMansion dwellers who are too exhausted or aesthetically challenged to do it themselves. Rocketing around Frisco in an "enormous, Coke-can-red GMC Yukon XL" she calls "Big Red," Tammie's conversation reels from rhapsodies about how "blessed" she and her clients are to sassy capitalist mottoes: "Moving the merch! That's what I'm all about."

Stuever also got to hang out with the Trykoskis (Jeff and Bridgette), who erect one of those huge synchronized flashing light displays that attract visitors (and traffic) to the neighborhood from miles around. Possibly the most consistently gratified of all Stuever's subjects, Jeff lives to construct this elaborate system, employing 50,000 lights and "$10,000 worth of sixteen-channel control boards" as well as a short-range FM transmitter so that spectators can tune their car radios to the soundtrack. (The song is "Wizards in Winter," by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a number Stuever describes as "'Stairway to Heaven' for the men of America who put tens of thousands of Christmas lights on their suburban homes and program them to blink to music.") Hired to design the lights for the faux Main Street of a local New Urbanist development called Frisco Square, Jeff becomes so obsessed that by the end of the book he's buying a shipping container filled with 27,000 sets of LED lights from a factory in China.

Lastly, Stuever spent time with Caroll Cavaso, a single mother of two who has to finance her family's Christmases on a considerably tighter budget; he meets Caroll and her 10-year-old daughter, Marissa, in the line for that Black Friday doorbuster. Tagging along with her, he attends a megachurch, where the pastor "casts himself as a fast-quipping, badass warrior for Christ. He is not above driving a bulldozer on stage to make his point." Frisco is crawling with this breed of preacher; Stuever dubs the typical specimen "Reverend True Religion Jeans" purveying "Venus-and-Mars-style jokes about women and men and relationships, with props. (Don't you hate it when your wife puts the toilet paper on the roll backwards? Don't you just sit there and say, 'Help me Lord'?)"

Despite his own aversion to personality cults and self-help pieties, Stuever clearly likes and respects Caroll, who finds much comfort in her church. The "true openness" with which she welcomes the pastor's nostrums and prefab pep talks moves him. He could be describing his position on Christmas as a whole when he writes, "I believe in little, except, strangely, I do believe in believers."

EDIT

http://www.salon.com/books/must_read/2009/11/22/tinsel/index.html

[mrcheerful]

1. Tis the season to merrily max out all your credit cards to get people

who don't need anything something they will either lose interest in within the next 6 weeks, to end up trashed or put in a dark closet or return to the store on dec 31st. Sure, they play xmas music so you either feel that your getting the xmas spirit or that the glow you feel from your xmas high has some deeper meaning other then giving the greedy more crap they don't need or want, but hey it makes them feel good.

I even got flamed for voicing my opinion on the great american holiday tradition of the dec greed fest. I didn't see the magic of the holiday, never mind that the magic of the season is all illusion to do one thing, enrich those already making more money then they can spend in 4 life times, but hey we got our Santa movies and our religious messages to sooth us and make us feel all warm and fuzzy. Just stay away from the items on sale and you won't get punched in the face by another well wisher trying to get the same item away from you.

[NMDemDist2]

2. well, now I don't have to ask how you got your username

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

4. Haha!

Cute.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Is that what YOU do?

I'm NOT asking this in a sarcastic manner.

Do you really do those things?

If I had to guess, I'd say, "Hell, no!"

Not just you -- this applies to nearly everybody.

I have NEVER met anyone who has gone deeply into debt to buy thoughtlessly for ingrate friends. What I think has happened, is that middle-class culture has found a unique way to suck the joy out of Christmas without harming a minor "buying spree" that is not a whole lot different than it was 50 years ago.

Fighting over a single item? It's so rare that when it happens, it gets talked about for years. (Ahnold and Sinbad were only acting!) And if a reporter happens to be on the scene, it hits the Wacky News feeds as quickly as it can be phoned or texted in.

I DO think that advertising has become steadily more grotesque over time. This applies to all times of the year, not simply Christmas. Watch Saturday morning kids' programming some time. And there is also the emerging phenomenon of http://www.chicagohaj.com/index.aspx">Hajj, Umruh, and Ramadan marketing in the Muslim world. Inshallah, Baby!

We conscientious Western liberal folk put so much moralizing nonsense into Christmas as a way to "balance out" the vulgarity of advertising that we have lost every bit of pleasure it has. There is no need whatsoever to do so -- simply celebrate Christmas the way that YOU choose to. The original idea behind Christmas (or Kwanzaa or Hanukkah or Yuletide or Candlemas or whatever you choose to call the winter solstice season), as with most holidays, involved the option of giving small presents, not the obligation to engage in mandatory Competitive Gifting. And religion, like greed, was originally NOT a part of the proceedings.

It's a nice time of the year. Most people actually have NOT lost sight of what it's all about. I hope you can look through all the vulgarity and the guilt-tripping. You may not actually enjoy the season, but there's no need to let it get your (sacrificial) goat!

--d!

[Nihil]

5. That is just obscene. (n/t)

:grr: