kontextmaschine:

You know if we’re lazily smearing things as anti-Semitic based on long-forgotten historical resonances can we do people who complain about the commercialization of Christmas?

This really started at the 19th Century dawn of the German Empire, contemporary with the growth of a thick commercial retail culture – “Christmas” as we know it is essentially an epiphenomenon of the department store – and much early criticism focused not on how it detracted from a religious cast the holiday had once had, but on how it was becoming a yearly ritual of riches flowing from Christian pockets into the tillers of Jewish retailers, manufacturers, and traders.

As time progressed and the Second Reich fell, this was the theme of infamous interwar antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer’s editorial cartoons at Christmastime every year.

(This was also, coincidentally, when and where the traditionally minor Jewish holiday of Hannukah was glowed up into a rival gift-giving celebration, so as to undercut Christmas as a draw for [then much more common, often with secular motives of cultural belonging] conversion.)

memecucker:

choppedcowboydinosaur:

kontextmaschine:

fruityyamenrunner:

kontextmaschine:

gaykarstaagforever:

kontextmaschine:

gaykarstaagforever:

kontextmaschine:

Between the increasingly dated midcentury songs and TV specials, the legacy prewar department store stuff like the Macy’s parade, and Hallmark movies about rejecting yuppie urbanity for idealized small-town life, Christmas in the US is increasingly an American Golden Age nostalgia festival

Northern East Coast American Golden Age nostalgia fest. There is always snow at Christmas, but not too much and it isn’t that cold out, really.

Also this “Golden Age” is exactly like 7 years of the late 50s. For white people. Who had money.

And were America.

(It was the “Camelot” early 60s, too. And the now-“Rust Belt” through Chicago to Minneapolis.)

Exactly. (“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was 1965)

both the Christmas songs i remember hearing in supermarkets so far, bearing in mind it is still November, even if we are in Advent, and wanting to get out are ex-Beatles Christmas money spinners

we are not the same

Yeah, original Christmas music these days is cash-in stuff to get some easy sales and maybe airplay in December from people looking for something, anything new. People forget there was a Taylor Swift Christmas EP in 2007. (With an original “Jesus is the Reason For the Season” War on Christmas song!)

I wonder if Christmas being seen as a 40′s - 50′s thing will get replaced with it being an 80′s thing. At least when it comes to Christmas movies since there’s a bunch from that era that are considered classics and it does have fairly well off people.

Gremlins, Die Hard, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Home Alone in ‘90… I could see it.

Between the increasingly dated midcentury songs and TV specials, the legacy prewar department store stuff like the Macy’s parade, and Hallmark movies about rejecting yuppie urbanity for idealized small-town life, Christmas in the US is increasingly an American Golden Age nostalgia festival

kontextmaschine:

• Christ is born and HE is savior! (Levant, 00-100)

• The day of his birth is a holiday called Christmas (Rome, 300s)

• Nicholas is sainted in his name (Anatolia, 400-500)

• St. Nicholas is “Santa Claus”, bringer of presents! (Dutch-American legend, NYC, USA, early 19th cen.)

• Santa Claus fills stockings riding a sleigh pulled by 8 reindeer (Clement Clarke Moore, USA, 1823)

• Christmas is a day where capitalist magnates are inspired away from profit-maximization by popular sentiment (Charles Dickens, London, UK, 1843)

• Christmas is a holiday where you erect a lit pine tree and trade store-bought presents (mid-late 19th cen., German lands)

• Santa Claus wears a red cap and suit (Coca-Cola and others, USA, 1930s)

• Santa has a 9th reindeer, a pathetic runt named Rudolph (Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward, Chicago, USA, 1939)

• Christmas is a day where people erect evergreen trees and exchange presents but a fuzzy green monster representing capitalism wears a red suit and teams with an ersatz runt reindeer to undermine it, but popular sentiment inspires him away (Theodore Geisel as “Dr. Seuss”, La Jolla California, USA, 1957)

Cultural evolution!

Meanwhile in half a century the other thread born from A Christmas Story and Die Hard and It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone becomes a story of a boy alienated from his parents because they don’t trust him with a gun pulling it together to kill invaders but also realize his life is richer putting up with them than it would be without

• Christ is born and HE is savior! (Levant, 00-100)

• The day of his birth is a holiday called Christmas (Rome, 300s)

• Nicholas is sainted in his name (Anatolia, 400-500)

• St. Nicholas is “Santa Claus”, bringer of presents! (Dutch-American legend, NYC, USA, early 19th cen.)

• Santa Claus fills stockings riding a sleigh pulled by 8 reindeer (Clement Clarke Moore, USA, 1823)

• Christmas is a day where capitalist magnates are inspired away from profit-maximization by popular sentiment (Charles Dickens, London, UK, 1843)

• Christmas is a holiday where you erect a lit pine tree and trade store-bought presents (mid-late 19th cen., German lands)

• Santa Claus wears a red cap and suit (Coca-Cola and others, USA, 1930s)

• Santa has a 9th reindeer, a pathetic runt named Rudolph (Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward, Chicago, USA, 1939)

• Christmas is a day where people erect evergreen trees and exchange presents but a fuzzy green monster representing capitalism wears a red suit and teams with an ersatz runt reindeer to undermine it, but popular sentiment inspires him away (Theodore Geisel as “Dr. Seuss”, La Jolla California, USA, 1957)

Cultural evolution!

I’m pretty sure Peanuts is the apex product of the midcentury American canon, and more specifically the Charlie Brown holiday TV specials.

Like, A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965, the first one.

Coca-Cola commissioned a 30-minute animated film with a jazz soundtrack based off the breakthrough comic strip repackaging depressive cynicism for kids. The plot is that the protagonist is depressed and so his psychiatrist tells him to conduct religious rituals to gain a sense of purpose but no one’s even taking the rituals seriously so they don’t work and the climax is literally straight-up King James Bible verses about our savior Jesus Christ reminding them to take the Christmas rituals seriously, at which point everyone is happy.

And America was like “yes, correct, this is so correct that we want to incorporate it itself into our national-popular Christmas rituals every year”, like the Swedes and their Donald Duck thing.

In fact, how about more like that, let’s reenchant every holiday in the civic canon with this vision of Protestant reserve in the face of failure. Let’s do Halloween, let’s do Thanksgiving, let’s do Election Day, Valentine’s Day, let’s… GAINAX made a Charlie Brown holiday special in 2002? What the fuck.

Let’s do Easter, come the ‘70s let’s do Arbor Day (that one didn’t catch on)…

kontextmaschine:

Police Navidad.

Police Navidad.