Keeping Christmas

Pour out the eggnog, don the questionable knitwear, and lower the needle onto a Bing Crosby record—it’s Christmas!

Don’t try to correct me, I’m not late.

You do know the song, right? The twelve days of Christmas. Not the one day of Christmas. Twelve days. We’re only up to four calling birds, and you’re already thinking about taking down your lights? For shame. Fake fan.

What do you gain from this, anyway, this urge to pack up Christmas furtively like an illegally-pitched tent? Are you worried they’ll laugh at you for keeping the Christmas spirit alive? You weren’t embarrassed erecting your Christmas tree before Thanksgiving, though you jolly well should have been.

Is it that you have no appreciation for savoring things? Are you all anticipation, with your eyes locked on the future and with no taste for the slow pleasure of enjoying what has already arrived? The Ghost of Christmas Past is doing alright, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is an absolute tyrant, but you’re letting the Ghost of Christmas Present is shrivel away to nothing.

Or perhaps you’re a salesperson or an economist. You’re perfectly happy to extend the pre-Christmas season, with its Christmas shopping and its overpriced peppermint-infused coffee drinks; but enjoying Christmas itself? No. That’s a drag on the economy. Twelve days? One day is already one day too many.

Or it could be that you don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Maybe it’s too religious—or not religious enough—for you. Fair enough either way. I’m not coming after conscientious objectors.

But to the rest of you, to those who purport to celebrate Christmas but who say it ended on 26 December: for shame!

We are already black and blue with the bruises dealt by the invisible hand of the market. Christmas is one of the few vestiges of a time when community celebration overrode our merely pecuniary concerns. But the market has conquered Christmas, optimizing it for maximum possible consumerism and minimum viable holiday.

You may not have the flexibility to avoid working for the twelve days of Christmas, I understand that. But some celebration of the twelve days, however feeble—that’s your miniscule rebellion against corporatism this year. Do something actually useful too, if you can. But it’s not nothing to make the holiday a bit more of a festival and a bit less of a colorless excuse for consumer spending, even if only for you and yours.

So don’t let the disappearance of the shop-window displays get you down. Just let the halls be decked, the gay apparel donned, and the yuletide carol queued—keeping Christmas is up to you!