2016 was a humongous, dripping ball of suck.
It’s very nearly behind us.
I know that the day of the year is really meaningless. January 1st isn’t magical, it’s just the next day.
Except that isn’t completely true, is it? There is something about starting a new year and leaving an old one behind. There is a sense of relief when we step away from one year into the next. Especially, when the year is a humongous, dripping ball of suck.
When we look in our rear view mirrors and watch 2016 trail away, we need to ask ourselves: What have I learned? What can I let go of? What did I gain?
I have a suggestion on something we can leave behind.
The war on Christmas.
There is no goddamn war on Christmas. It is made up. It is false. It makes no sense.
There is no dispute that humans worship different gods. A significant number of us worship no god at all. The cool thing is, there is room for all of us to believe what we want. If you are Christian and someone wishes you a happy holiday, there is no need to get butt hurt. A fellow human expressed a desire that you experience joy. Fucking say thank you.
Conversely, if someone tells you “Merry Christmas” there is no need to get snippy about it. Yes, the holiday season isn’t
just for Christians, but still, is it horrible for someone to suggest you be merry for a day? Merry is awesome. I mean, you can’t do merry all the time because that’s just crazy, but for a day or two? Rock on with your big, bad, merry self. If someone tells me “Merry Christmas”, then I am going to thank them and probably return the exact sentiment. Because there is nothing wrong with saying Merry Christmas.
We continue seeing many stories of hate. We’re divided in this country in a scary and sad way. So much is broken. How on earth can we even begin to think about fixing this shit if we are going to have the same shrill conversations about the war on Christmas?
This is so simple to fix because there is fucking nothing to fix. If we could all just not be dicks and graciously accept a few kind words that are meant to spread good will and well wishes then that pretty much ends the made up war on Christmas.
Unless, there is an actual war on Christmas. Not like the one we’ve been having year after year. I mean an actual war.
I think the bullets would be made of gum drops and jelly beans and marshmallows. The chemical weapon would be eggnog because nothing says “my enemy will be soundly defeated” like nutmeg flavored phlegm. The soldiers would all be dressed like nutcrackers. If there is that kind of war on Christmas, then world should be involved because it would be really funny to watch nutcracker looking dudes shoot the place up with candy. I don’t think marshmallow bullets would even sting. I mean, they’d be annoying because you would definitely get sticky if you shot with a marshmallow bullet, but I don’t think they would do real damage.
The point is, if there was that kind of war on Christmas, then we could come together, fight the enemy, have a drink together, then go about our lives and celebrate or don’t celebrate the holidays as we see fit.
I wish peace and happiness for all of us. I wish that we could shed our prejudice and our hatred. I wish that all humans would understand how precious and vulnerable our planet is and treat it accordingly. I wish for all the humans to be safe and fed.
We better make some changes next year, or I fear 2017 will make us pine for 2016. If we can’t get past how we say things to each other that are meant to be nice, then I have no idea how we will get through any of the not made up problems.
Let’s remember the important and wise words of Bill and Ted: Be excellent to each other.
Not what I’ve come to expect from you exactly, that is, bullets made of marshmallows, but this morning it was just what I needed to hear.
Hell, I don’t know what I expect to come from me. Haha. Glad this spoke to you.
So glad to see this! This whole “war on Christmas” thing and pettiness about the “right” greeting just makes me crazy! I’m just glad whenever anyone wishes me well no matter how it’s expressed. Here’s wishing us all a better 2017!
Yes!!!
Excellent!
The War on Christmas should be the Battle for Happy Children…
Then we could come together and make sure that ALL the little kids know Christmas is a once a year time for them to say nice things, be nice and receive nice from people being nice.
It could be all about the gifts of being nice and receiving nice.
I KNOW for a fact that fewer people would be cranky if they didn’t have to spend money on ‘Nice’ and could just give ‘free nice.’
And fewer cranky people means fewer hurt feelings by misplaced words and sentiments since ALL we would be giving and getting is ‘nice!’
Of course, EVERYBODY would have to practice being and giving nice all year, but it would be no different than the planning and saving of money to buy ‘maybe’ gifts and ‘shut ‘er up’ gifts and ‘who knows what she wants’ gifts.
EVERYBODY wants ‘nice!’
Right?
‘Nice: Never For Sale’ or ‘Nice: Now at 100% Off!’
Then we could be ‘Excellent to each other’ cuz nice is excellent!
But, since there are always naysayers, we’ll put them on the front lines to be shot by marshmallow bullet armed Nutcrackers and forced to drink nutmeg phlegm until they can be nice too…
Fuck I’m glad that Christmas shit’s over…
Nice.
Hahahah..I love this.
I consider myself very lucky that I know people who celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and even Solstice. Heck, I go to a doctor whose family celebrates Festivus. No joke. They put up an aluminum pole and have The Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength.
She also once told me my high blood pressure was probably caused by part of my kidney dying and added “It’s not QUITE dead” and I knew I could trust her, but that’s another story.
The point is this is, at least in the northern hemisphere, the darkest, coldest time of year. It’s a time when we need to work together, support each other, and bring joy to each other.
In other words PARTY ON DUDES!
Hahaha..YES! Party on!
I so believe in the magic of 2017 changing us into better humans. Mostly because we’ve been shitty humans already, and there isn’t much that can go worse even more. I hope.
Happy Holidays.
Let’s just try to hope for the best.
You are so absolutely right – it makes no sense to me, and never has, that people argue and fight so much over religion. Why should it bother me what or whom you or anyone else chooses to worship, or what kind of holiday happiness is wished upon me? It’s crazy that people get killed or their homes burned to the ground or their children bullied….over a religious belief? If I live to be 200 I will never understand this.
Re the New Year – I can’t even imagine a 2017 so bad that we’d be pining for this godawful 2016 we’ve just endured. So ditto to all your wishes: “I wish peace and happiness for all of us. I wish that we could shed our prejudice and our hatred. I wish that all humans would understand how precious and vulnerable our planet is and treat it accordingly. I wish for all the humans to be safe and fed.” Indeed. Happy 2017.
I am tipping my glass to you..xoxoxox
Thanks, great to read here, your exeeasperations are ones that I have too.
Well you are a certified online blogger that people like, maybe you can convince people to stop with stupid stuff and focus on real vip stuff — like women and girls who are forced to cover their entire bodies with one color scheme, or be stoned to death. The boys that have to grow up in this real situation. The boys girls women and men starving down the street from that city. The starving and homeless in our country US. And me. Why are we all not giving to me =o .
Seriously — I grew up partly in communist northeast europe and there were no religions officially aloud then (1960’s). So the govts allowed Mr + Ms Claus, Father Christmas, etc. My pagan friends celebrate Yule, and long long ago peeps would put small gifts of nuts etc under pine trees for little animals like squirrels and birds.
Let us gift CHILDREN with One Time Of Year unfettered or argued about.
Everyone knows Santa and elves are too busy to even engage in all of this BS !
-Irene.
Exactly! We need to focus on the real problems.
YES. I wouldn’t mind a war made of Christmas candy. I love this analogy, Michelle. Let’s be excellent to each other. We all want mostly the same things so it should be simple. A lovely sentiment to end the year on.
I really want some candy now.
OK, I wrote a comment and it disappeared, maybe because it had two links in it. Here it is again with one link removed to see if that works:
My favorite “war on Christmas” bit was the one Jon Stewart did on the Daily Show with Jessica Williams. Their website only offers part of it, and you have to have Flash to watch it, but here it is:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mgspsw/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-war-on-christmas—s–t-s-getting-weird-edition
Yesterday in answer to an argument about the war on Christmas on a political blog, I dropped a link into a comment that led to a page of photos taken on Christmas day 1967 in Vietnam, and said nope, this is what war looks like on Christmas and every other damn day.
Some of this shit is, indeed, ridiculous. Sometimes ridiculous can be funny, though:
(I put a link to the Rude Pundit’s post on nativity scene sets here, but removed it to see if my comment would post without it. If you find the other comment in your spam filter or something, feel free to delete this one.)
As for 2016, right up until Fuckface von Clownstick got elected, I was doing pretty well. Yeah, I know a bunch of my heroes died this year, but I understand that being now 56 years old, and having heroes who were mostly rock and rollers, my heroes are gonna be croaking off at an accelerated pace. They, for the most part, are all ten years older than me, and didn’t have an older generation’s mistakes to learn from when it came to staying healthy while also getting really high a lot.
Let me be clear, though, it wasn’t anything special about the year that made my situation improve, and I will be as glad as anyone else to see it gone.
I’m sort of looking at 2017 as a challenge and an opportunity: an opportunity to come together and show the world what we’re made of, like we did in the wake of the 2004 election, and a challenge to not take that happening for granted, as demonstrated by our recent hideous lesson in believing things to be inevitable.
Anyway, I hope your Christmas was good, and I hope your New Year is even better, and please tell Alfie I said meow…
Thank you for the links. Your other comment was stuck in spamland. We had a chill and awesome Thanksgiving. Alfie says he’s tired and wants to suck on his blanket for a while.
I know a lot of people are grieving a lot of things that happened in 2016. But I have to buck the tide here and say that I was so excited by the presidential election this year that I was almost giddy, and as a result I have the HIGHEST expectations for 2017. I can hardly wait to get started on it! Here’s why.
For many years, I have been asking myself, my husband, my friends and the infinite night sky, “What is WRONG with people? What does it take to make them get off the couch and get activated?”
I’d point out this bit of discriminatory law or that bit of freedom curtailed by the Homeland (for their protection, of course) and I’d moan, “Why aren’t people in the street? What will it take to wake them up?”
Then I’d yammer on about the 60’s, and how we organized and protested and brought misguided Johnson and insane Nixon to their knees. And we did it when our only tools of communication were rumors or typed manuals passed person to person by hippies couch-surfing across the country.
So now there’s Twitter and Snapchat, I moaned, and people can be informed and organized in a Flash Mob minute and STILL people aren’t out in the streets. And I felt life, at least life as I knew it in America, really was ending as T.S. Elliot envisioned, not with a bang but a whimper.
But then 2016 campaign came along, and brought us Trump, and the November election made him our God King and at last—at last!– I know what it takes to get Americans off their couches and out into their streets–literally! I have seen more activism since the election results were announced than I have seen in the last 20 years. And for the first time in a long while I feel a great deal of excitement and expectation of people remembering the real power lies in their own hands and using it to make life better for everyone.
Sometimes people don’t really know what they do want until something comes along that they REALLY don’t want. Then, suddenly, it becomes very clear to them what they want, and they start actively looking for ways to achieve it.
Sometimes people don’t remember that there is a hero aspect of themselves just waiting to be called forth. But then a dragon comes along to challenge them. In that dark moment, people call out for help and–miracle of miracles!– find that the hero they call out to was always there, inside them, just waiting to be summoned.
So I hail the orange dragon with the tiny hands that has volunteered to challenge us and wake us from our long sleep. By playing the enemy, he will inspire us to play the hero. We will act out a great adventure. The best! One with exciting battles, and seeming defeats and eventual triumphs, and in the end songs will be written about it and stories will be told that will be repeated for decades to come. So let’s begin the story of 2017 the way all the best stories begin, with “Once upon a time,” and let’s set our focus on making it a story that will inspire people for a long time to come.
I am crushing on you so hard right now.
I’m not so sure that my feelings of Goodwill will stretch to the Tangerine Tosspot, but I will certainly raise a glass to Humanity at midnight on the 31st, in the hope we can collectively have an improvement on 2016.
Yeah…I don’t think mine stretches that far, either.
LOL.
But it certainly will be extended to you and yours.
Let’s hope 2017 is a great year. 🙂
YES! Might as well be hopeful.
I am a Christian and I won’t preach to anyone. Just saying you are a Christian, Muslim, Hindu… however seems to provoke severe anger in some people, and it is really surprising. I have tried to figure out why and the only real answer I have come up with is projection. Like when you are dating someone and they accuse you of having an affair because, really, they are the one cheating. So the narrative becomes “Don’t you dare call yourself a Christian – you are just another atheist like myself”.
Oh wow..I would never presume to say that to someone. I don’t identify with any religion, but I totally respect those who do.
Love this, Michelle!
Thank you!!!
I have been saying Merry Christmas for years and thought as you did until this season. I wished someone a Merry Christmas who yelled Happy Hanukkah back at me and accused me of being a Trump supporter. I had only purchased some fresh cheese and vegetables from this man, who I did not know, and was wishing him a happy holiday greeting. No political discoussion unless you count a back and forth about favorite types of apples political. But one man. One man upset by the events of November does not a war make. It did make me realize that now is the time to step up and be aggressively kind to everyone because 2016 in many ways just sucked the big one. Beth
That is so unfortunate. But yes, aggressive kindness..that IS in order.
Great post, especially as we face what may come next year! Many moons ago I worked for Lancome and the holidays were always about ‘party make-up’ and men trying to figure out what the hell to get for their women. One guy was a total asshole and, of course, he took forever to decide what to get. As he left I said, “Have a great holiday!” He turned around and said, with an evil look on his face, “Don’t you tell me what to do!”
I would have LOVED to have a marshmallow machine gun for that guy!
b
What a gigantic miserable asshole. Wow.
The holidays in the winter solstice time of the year are about bringing light to this darkest time of the year (think about it). So we light candles, burn special logs, have bonfires, share foods and treats…
Our responsibility is to bring as much light to each other as we can so we can all make it through. taking umbridge at how someone chooses to bring light is such bullshit!
Now let’s all get out there with our little lights and RESIST THE DARKNESS.
YES! Resist the darkness. I needed this.