  Hello, my name is…DEVIL’S ADVOCATE – 12/04/03 Thanksgiving in my mind was always the gateway to the wondrous holiday season, the time when the food was plentiful, the snow was bountiful and the school days were scarce. Sitting down at your plate of turkey, stuffing and potatoes meant that the blessed celebration had finally commenced; that it was now time to put thoughts of school, work or responsibility aside in favor of lavish meals, festive gatherings and an almost otherworldly level of procrastination, apathy and general relaxation. A 24-hour gorge-fest on turkey day, 48 hours of good old fashioned Christian gift-giving madness near Christmas, and then the grand finale, 36 hours of drunken Bacchanalia when the ball drops on Times Square. Sprinkle in a couple of weeks off of work, add in a few days spent doing nothing productive other than sledding and drinking hot chocolate, and you got yourself THE GREATEST TIME OF THE YEAR, buddy. Nothing else comes close. As important as Thanksgiving is to the overall enjoyment of the holiday season, I always treated it as the beginning, nothing more. Sure, I love turkey day as much as any other hard workin’, Commie-hatin’ American, but it never felt to me like the BIG DAY during the winter months.
It was a day to spend time with family – no matter what you actually thought about them the other 364 days of the year – and to pig out on some good home cooking. But other than that, it was nothing more than the first big holiday of the season. The same held for New Years; not that I don’t love the madness of December 31, but it is the bookend on the holiday season, the last futile attempt to eat and drink and [insert favorite sin here] as much as possible before jobs/work/school came calling again. The big holiday was the one in the middle, the one that required – no, DEMANDED – a week and a half of days off flanking it just out of respect. The one with all the songs, all the great TV specials, all the great decorations and desserts, and - oh yeah, that’s right – the little matter of a tie in with ONE OF THE BIGGEST RELIGIONS IN THE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD. The big one was always Christmas. I never really thought about the reasons behind this – I’m not much of a Jesus Freak, so I can’t say Christmas is important to me from the “organized religion” standpoint – until I read the recent article penned on Beer N’ Porn by the esteemed Dexter Otis Green. Mr. Green wrote an excellent piece where he described why, in his opinion, Thanksgiving is the superior holiday, and why Christmas’s rampant consumerism makes the holiday not only subservient to turkey day in his mind, but dirty and flawed in its own right. A great point, certainly, but it bothered me; and now, a week and a few glasses of scotch later, I’ve come up with a response to the bah humbuggers of the world.
Christmas is not only the best holiday of the season, but in many ways it is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas, no matter what Target/Filenes/Best Buy et al. want you to think, is all about giving , while Thanksgiving is all about having, consuming, and most importantly, wasting . Let me explain. As much as the pious among us would wont to disagree, Christmas is no longer a religious holiday. Heck, it never really was one, anyway. Even the most devout Christians will tell you that the real important days for the clergy is the Easter season, which recounts the last days of Jesus Christ and the essential tenant of Christianity – that Jesus Christ died and was reborn again for the absolution of sins. Christmas, on the other hand, is a minor religious holiday, and was conveniently aligned by the clergy to coincide with the more secular celebrations of the winter solstice, to make Christianity more accessible to the layman.
When you take into consideration the cultural aspects of Christmas – Santa Claus, Christmas trees (which – surprise surprise! – are a Lutheran tradition), mistletoe and the like –you see that what we as a community consider to be uniquely Christmas is quite far away from the advent roots of the holiday. Just because the holiday has moved away from its religious roots doesn’t mean it’s lost any deeper meaning, however.
In actuality, it’s the accessibility of the holiday to individuals across religious and cultural lines that make it such an important worldwide celebration, not just in the United States. What has become the cornerstone of the celebration is the giving, of showing your love for your fellow man through gift-giving, good deeds and a little spare change in the Salvation Army can. Of course, Target/Filenes/Best Buy MegaCorp loves the consumerist slant of the holiday season, which is why starting the Friday after turkey day we are inundated with advertisements telling us what, where, and how much to buy for our fellow man.
Its enough to make even the most idealistic person slap their head in disgust and cry “STOP! I’ve had enough of this petty, materialistic holiday!” I must admit, I’ve felt the same way plenty of times, especially during those years when your heartfelt gifts to your friends and family are returned in kind by a generic “Happy Holidays!” postcard. Perception, however, is never reality. The Great Private Sector in the Sky can try as hard as they can to saturate our minds with greed and avarice, but they’ll never succeed in destroying the true meaning of Christmas – namely, the only time of the year when everyone, from saint to sinner, martyr to murderer, is expected to put all pretense aside and just be nice to each other, God Damn it .
Granted, it still seems that this spirit of giving still requires some measure of material wealth – after all, the ending of “A Christmas Carol” wouldn’t be half as touching if Scrooge was broke as a joke and unable to buy his way out of years of treating his fellow man like shit. But the important concept is not how much you can give, it’s giving more than you can that defines the true spirit of the holidays. Think about Bob Cratchit saving his meager earnings from Scrooge and blowing it on gifts for his kids and family, even when he himself didn’t have clothes that kept him warm during the year. More importantly, think about Scrooge’s nephew inviting him to Christmas dinner every year, even when Scrooge continues to ostracize him and his family.
Every year it’s the same answer, yet every year he asks the same question. Why? Because Christmas is about forgiveness, and family, and being giving not only of your money, but of your heart as well. Take time to think about the institution of Santa Claus, and you’ll see that even the great red icon of selfishness himself is at heart about the giving spirit of Christmas. Adults create the idea of Santa for their children, so that they can have something to understand and grasp before they are old enough to understand the true meanings behind the holidays. Why would we as a society perpetuate such a fairy tale that forces us to spend great amounts of time, effort and money on our children?
Because we care, and because we want them to have the same magical experience of a Christmas morning brought to you by Claus and co. as we did growing up. And so we sacrifice, and save our bonuses and our pocket money, and spent it all on one grandiose morning where our sons and daughters can beam wild-eyed at a tree covered in presents. And the greatest sacrifice of all? We sign each gift “Santa,” not “Mom and Dad,” and for years the children play with toys they never suspect came from their loving parents.
That, my friend, is the spirit of Christmas. Of course there will always be people who miss the point, who never grow up and who only care about the gifts that are theirs, but the spirit of Christmas lives on regardless, and thankfully, most of us still understand what makes this holiday so special. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is the most selfish and materialistic holiday I can think of. Thanksgiving is the polar opposite of Christmas. Whereas Christmas is about caring for your fellow man, Thanksgiving is all about taking care of yourself. Whereas Christmas is about giving to those who are less fortunate, Thanksgiving is about celebrating what makes you fortunate over others.
Whereas Christmas is about sacrifice, Thanksgiving is about gluttony and greed. Thanksgiving is the celebration of ourselves, our success and our possessions, and worst of all, it’s central function is to waste . Who can honestly say they make only enough food for Thanksgiving dinner to eat in one sitting? Hell no. Thanksgiving is all about cooking enough food to feed yourself ten times over. It’s about cooking a Turkey the size of Mothra just because you can, because you can afford it, because your local store sells it, because your country knows how to genetically engineer them that size, forever and ever, Amen. It’s about mountains of mashed potatoes, acres worth of corn, turnips and squash, and seas of gravy.
It’s about ten trays of cheese and crackers before you even sit down to dinner. It’s about twelve different desserts with three types of coffee and four different types of milk with varying levels of fat because some people don’t like following up 30,000 calories of dead poultry with whole milk. It’s about consuming. And at the end of the day, when you find that you can’t possibly fit all the leftovers in your fridge, it’s about waste. It’s about throwing your Aunt’s three-bean casserole into the disposal because you know no one’s going to eat it.
How can this possibly represent a day of thanks? Don’t get me wrong – Thanksgiving is a grand holiday, and in the hands of those who care, it can be a wonderful day of reflection and emotional connection. Unfortunately, for most it just ends up being a 12-hour Turkey and football fest, and I just can’t see how that is superior to the magic and joy of Christmas. Some say Christmas wouldn’t be anything without the presents. What would Thanksgiving be without the turkey? Or the food? What a presumptuous holiday, one that celebrates the affluence of our society without care for the millions around the world who starve. It’s not always easy to be thankful for what you don’t have, but it’s always easy to sacrifice yourself for the betterment of others. Merry Christmas. -Mr. Carson 
