Oswegonian Editor-in-Chief Annika Wickham published an editorial supporting Christmas creep, a term used since the mid-1980s to refer to a phenomenon of retailers and consumers embracing the Christmas season as early as Nov 1. Wickham says to the anti-creep crowd, “Do not get upset when other people do not follow your standards.” To that one asks, why must everyone else have to deal with your standards? Christmas creep has changed the holiday into a jingle bell leviathan subjecting everyone to its premature explosion of senseless festivity before Halloween even has a chance to settle in the minds of candy-infected sweet tooths.
That is to say, Christmas does not even deserve such a revered treatment as “the most wonderful time of the year.” Yes, it may offend everyone, but someone ought to say it: Christmas sucks. It is lame at best, and at worst an obnoxious display of spurious positivity, mindless consumerism, cultural hegemony, and just plain sappiness. To celebrate Christmas so early in the year is not just inflating the holiday to exhausting ubiquity, but to celebrate Christmas at all with the supersaturated revelry of chintzy garbage and worst of all, socially pressured gift-giving is inane, insane and gross as a candy cane.
Christmas may have a tinsel pedestal while wielding inexorable power over the tides of cognitive Christmas-ification, but when such a holiday’s demands start to creep into the already depressing lives of the unsuspecting consumer, one should start to question the implications of Christmas and its apologists. Christmas is arguably the biggest holiday of the year in America. While being a Christian holiday, the supersedence of diversity by cultural Christianity has molded every American into a Christmas celebrator, whether they consent or not. Consumers and especially the poor retail workers must endure the annual indoctrination into the Christmas cult through Christmas radio, Christmas decorations, Christmas advertisements, etc. Gradually everything becomes Christmas and Christmas becomes everything.
Remember when that pastor got angry about Starbucks not putting snowflakes on their disposable cups? It is appalling that the natural effect of wintertime is now tied to Christmas like a bow. It is even more appalling that under Christmas creep, the autumnal season is forsaken for the cause of a frivolous Christmas. November should be a mellow recess after Halloween and before the demands of winter weather. To let Christmas interfere is to reject the beauty and purpose of autumn.
Lastly, there is the least excusable aspect of Christmas: gift-giving. The class of wealthy professional spenders have used Christmas creep to dedicate a longer expanse to purchasing loads and loads of future landfill. The impressionable class of worker-consumers mimic this behavior to hide the truth, that Christmas is one large regretful expense. The tradition goes to keep the gift a secret from the receiver, resulting in the awkward exchange of an unwanted gift by someone who has only a thin semblance of your personality but feels obligated to get you something because it is Christmas. Instead of overloading oneself with the financial burden of Christmas gifts, one should demonstrate their friendship and cordiality by just being themselves and enjoying company. Do not let a capitalist profit off of your incessant need to be “in the Christmas spirit.”
When people like Wickham engage in Christmas creep, they are starting down a slope of what seems like simple tranquility but is actually a subtle adoption of Christmas’s secret toxicity. Let people enjoy things? No, let people hate things!
Photo via Frans van Heerden via Pexels
