On Fascism and Christmas

K's putting up our Christmas tree right now. I'm sitting on the couch, laptop on my lap top vaguely hoping that the radiation or something from it will kill the fecundity of my testicles, and I've noticed that our collection of ornaments has a very large snowflake to everything else ratio. This may sound all innocent and crap unless you're a Christian fundamentalist who's offended by the non-religious aspect of snowflakes and snowmen on a Christmas tree, but it's not. It's really a sinister attend by northerners to co-opt a holiday that should be universal (at least in Christian majority nations) and make the rest of us feel inferior because our Christmases are really more brown or green.

I never once saw snow on Christmas until after I got out of college and got married and visited K's grandparents in Cleveland. It snowed 3 feet over night (and rained in the middle so it was really 2 feet of snow and a crust of ice topped by another foot or so of snow. The next white Christmas I had was in Denver when again we watched 3+ feet of snow fall from the sky, stranding my sister at work downtown while the rest of us were stuck in her apartment in the 'burbs. I never even saw snow last past lunch until college.

Don't get me wrong; I love the snow. I'm warm-blooded by nature and would much prefer to shovel snow than mow my yard. But it is entirely unnatural for me to associate Christmas with snow. For me, snow is something foreign, something to wish for but I have to travel to enjoy. Instead of singing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas", I should be singing "I'm dreaming of a brown Christmas," although for some reason there are a ton of little green plants in the fields around my house. Hell, most of my Christmases involved T-shirt and jeans and walking down the road to my aunt's house for lunch and gifts.

So I propose those of us in snow-challenged areas fight to take back Christmas from our snow-Nazi northern neighbors. When you hear Bing Crosby singing about his white Christmases, call the radio station and complain that snow makes baby Jesus cry and you demand they replace all instances of said song with "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."

If a band of carollers assails you with harmonized calls of "dashing through the snow" or "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" punch them in the face. You'll probably even be able to get a good shot in on all of them. They'll probably be so shocked that they're being attacked that they won't have a good reaction time. You don't really have to draw blood, just let them know that you're tired of being treated like a second-class person just because you're snow challenged.

Now, taking up the cause of taking back Christmas for the rest of us make make you look a little bit like a Scrooge, but it'll be worth it in the end when you're finally able to represent your own reality on your tree with tufts of dry grass, collard greens, and flowers. And I promise, in the end, taking pride in your own heritage and throwing off the yoke of the culture of another region will bring your inner peace and happiness.