The following is cross-posted from PoliBlog:
The LAT has a good piece on seasonal complaining that is worth reading: Stop that Christmas griping:
please spare me the gauzy romanticization of some pure, pre-commercial American Christmas past.
Maybe it’s because ours is the most untraditional and coldly utilitarian of cultures, but whether we’re liberals or conservatives, Americans have this terrible tendency to sentimentalize a lost innocence that never really was. Our constant griping about Christmas is a perfect example.
As much as we like to pretend Christmases past were pure and perfect, the holiday was celebrated in some places and ignored in others until the late 19th century. Before that in the U.S., most businesses and schools remained open, and even Congress routinely convened on Christmas Day. And you know all that nostalgia about old-time New England Christmases? It’s claptrap. The Puritans once banned the celebration of Christmas, not only because it lacked biblical foundation but because of all the drinking and adult tomfoolery associated with it.
Indeed.
As I have noted on multiple occasions in the past, Christmas as we currently know it is not a centuries-old practice with origins in the ancient church. Rather, it is a fairly recent phenomenon. And, as the piece linked above rightly notes, much of the concerns that are currently expressed about the secularization of the holiday are hardly new.
We in America (and really, human beings in general) have a horrible habit of pretending like the past was ideal and that the current generation is ruining it. When, in fact, reality is much more complicated than that.
Some past musing on this topic: