We Wish You a Merry Schiz-mas!
Nearly half of the kid’s at my child’s school have parents who work at Microsoft, but otherwise it is quite diverse. There are a couple of families from Palestine, one from Tibet, and the bulk coming from China, South and Central Asia, Middle East or Eastern Europe (in about that order). I’m not aware of a single kid from a traditional WASP family, although there might be a few.
So I was pleasantly surprised when the school invited parents to hear the children sing in a “holiday sing-along”. There had been no celebrations for Moon Festival, Diwali, or Ramadan, and I knew that several of the children don’t celebrate Christmas, so I wasn’t sure how it would work out. But the kids started out strong with a few secular carols like “Jingle Bells”, and none of them seemed to be too uncomfortable.
Then they launched into an energetic rendition of “Happy Hanukkah”, all singing cheerily about “lighting the menorah”. There is a decidedly uncomfortable air in the room as parents glance around, wondering what’s coming next. Everyone winces in anticipation as the following song begins, loudly, “WE WISH YOU A MERRY…”
The children continue, “…HOLIDAYS, WE WISH YOU A MERRY HOLIDAYS, WE WISH YOU…”. All the parents let out sighs of relief as disaster is averted. Asking children to utter the words, “MERRY CHRIS-MAS”, and thus affirm the birth of Chris, would have been unbearably offensive. Especially to menorah-lighting Palestinians or Tibetans who have been oppressed by Chris for so long.
Yes, I’m being a little bit sarcastic, but the truth is that I have no problem with Chris. I have several friends named Chris. The real problems come when people run around singing about CHRIST this time of year.
Last weekend, while shopping at J.Z. Rose (the store attached to the skybridge from MSFT Lincoln Square office), I was delighted to hear carolers in the store. The Dickens Carolers, dressed to the gills in traditional Victorian garb, were pleasing passers-by with traditional songs. J.Z. Rose is a rather pagan, practically Wiccan store, and they had obviously hired these people to sing. So I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The carolers began some vaguely familiar ditty about “Holly and Ivy”, and then one of them blurted out something about “Our Lord Jesus Christ”. Again it happened! And then, again! Were they not aware that there were people watching?!?!
It was like a sword cut through the audience. I could see a small cadre of watching fundies, no doubt emboldened by this public display of power, plotting to invade all of our homes and take away our porn. With each new utterance of “Our Lord Jesus Christ”, their backs became straighter, their lips narrower, and their eyes colder. Looking as us. For the secularists in the crowd, the first utterance was like a slap across the face. Then with each repetition, they became paler and more listless, like animals ready for the slaughter. They would have run around in desperate frenzy, for fear of the loss of porn, were it not for their energy being sapped.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Actually, they had those singers throughout the mall, so they weren’t hired specifically by J. Z. Rose. (In the central part of the mall the singers were so thick they had to wait their turn! And each group sang exactly the same set of songs as far as I could tell.)
January 8th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Interesting. There were some marching toy soldiers across the street at Bellevue Place Wintergarden. Regarding the songs, they took requests at J.Z. Rose and I tried to stump them, but they had books with all sorts of old songs in it. They even had some additional lyrics I had never heard for some of the older songs.