Christmas decorating and its decadence in the Post Modern Era

My wife spends almost a month decorating our house for Christmas. It is always very spectacular. I help, but I have to give the real credit to her. The decorations go all through our house, but quite a bit of time is spent just on the tree. This weekend I have begun taking the decorations down. And it is a bit sad to me, because none of the family, the kids and grandkids, came over to appreciate it.

Part of the problem is that she had Covid over Christmas (the first time either of us caught it, and I kept telling her we needed to go get the latest shot, but she put it off a little too late). Then, when we were able to celebrate after Christmas and New Years, my oldest stepson wanted to show off his house which is about 80 miles away from the rest of the family, so in the end, we did not have any celebration at our house. We like that because, we always spend a lot of time preparing for celebrations, and my wife always insists on cooking multiple dishes of food for a good three days beforehand, which means a lot of assisting on my part (and little sleep). Though in the end, even having a celebration at my stepson's house meant we still cooked for 3 days, and at the end of the festivities, had to drive 80 miles home after 3 days of little sleep.

My wife grew up in the Philippines and we met in Japan back in the 80's. Now at that time Christmas was barely celebrated, and not a holiday in Japan, and while it was a big holiday in the Philippines, decorating, especially for an American homesick for the Christmas spirit I grew up with back home, left a lot to be desired for. A christmas tree in the Philippines was typically a bare tree branch painted white, and nailed to two pieces of plywood on the bottom to make a base.

My first Christmas in the Philippines with her kids, and I said, no, that stick won't do. I went and bought the only thing I could find at a fancy department store where a lot of foreigners shopped--a plastic christmas tree that, once assembled, stood only 4 feet tall, if that much. I then bought ornaments and lights and so many toys that I felt sorry for all the families who's kids longingly watched us check out.

All these years later, and I could say that over the years, my wife has really embraced the spirit of Christmas decorating, as our Western traditions have traditionally idealized it. My stepkids, and my son, and our grandkids have grown up in that tradition. For my son and stepkids it was since we returned to the States in about '97.

She creates a Christmas masterpiece. And the tree is very heavily decorated with lights, garlands, tinsel, and ornaments, and even bows, the latter of which may sound tacky, but she makes it so Christmassy and decorative. But our kids find it gawdy and too much. One of the last times I decorated the tree, I covered it in a large amount of tinsel, as we used to do when I was growing up. The kids thought it was horrible and very funny.

So as I spent the weekend taking down the tree, I'm wondering if Christmas decorating in America is becoming minimalist, or is it just the sentimentalities of my own kids from their Filipino roots (though my son was 3 when we moved here), and in turn their influence on their own kids.

Have we become so divorced from nature, that the ideal Christmas tree today should be one that is closer to a tree in a summer forest, rather than abstractly imitating the winter, and the decorations of the holiday? I grew up with immensely decorated trees. And it was a holiday treat to go downtown and look at the Christmas displays, and to drive around at night just to see the Christmas lights on the government buildings and so forth. The buildings still have Christmas lights and decorations, and today we might go see the houses that are most heavily decorated. But it seems that there is something lost.

Don't misunderstand me. This is not a rant about the war on Christmas! I'm not even a Christian, and I will say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or anything else with a sincere wish for whoever I'm saying it to, to have a happy time for this season. To me, Christmas is a cultural tradition. and to be honest, the Christmas most of us know is a cultural creation based as much on the work of Dickens as it is on the Christian tradition, and we shant forget that there is a healthy helping of European pagan traditions mixed in. It is a Cultural Phenomena.

So, this is more of a rant on the postmodern decadence of culture. Or perhaps its just something happening in my own family.

But back to Christmas. What does this say about the Charlie Brown Christmas tree? To my generation there was a clear message of acceptance of those who are marginalized, or even, the Other. Becasuse the tree he picked, represented the Other, the one that would have been overlooked, discarded and rejected. For in every home there was a fancy tree, very beautiful and heavily decorated. But is there any message if the Charlie Brown Christmas tree is normalized? Or, at least, Christmas decorating decays to a minimalist imitation of the past, resulting in a pathetic Charlie-Brown-Christmas-tree-like level of effort. Then the story, and the whole reason the tree was special loses its meaning.

Ideally we want a world without racism or marginalized people. But it should not be a world where we eliminate difference and diversity. The one thing that was especially special about Charlie Brown's seemingly pathetic tree, is that it was appreciated because it was different. And it is culture that gives us the appreciation of diversity, and multiplicity. And culture should teach us the empathy and appreciation that gave value to that tree. One of the biggest failures of Marxism was to try to deconstruct and destroy culture and replace it with a universal Bauhaus-style conformity. For those who don't know, the square box-like Bauhaus architecture was designed by Marxists in an attempt to create a utilitarian and functional living space without any individual differences. The architects became angry when, after creating Bauhaus neighborhoods, people tried to decorate and paint their own individual houses.

To be clear, the lesson here is not to perpetuate marginality, rather to perpetuate and promote culture and that it is through that that diversity is valued.

Today, we live in a time where it seems the ideal dwelling is a tiny house with only the bare necessities contained within it. Where is the culture within this? For several centuries, Europeans have criticized Americans for their lack of culture. Indeed, visit a chateaux, a palazzo, a castle, or a palace (yes, I know that technically that is redundant) in Europe, and you are bathed in the artwork, the colors, the architecture, and above all, a long history of culture. It seems that in America, we took that criticism, and someone said, 'Hold my beer...'

I could see a future Christmas in a tiny house with new, but very few, possessions, chosen only for their utilitarian value, and I assume, representing, in some way, the latest meme-based brand name. And in the corner, a Christmas tree imported from the Philippines---a bare stick, without leaves, painted white and nailed to two pieces of plywood for a base. (Let me point out that I don't mean to talk bad about the Philippine Christmas tree. For a tropical archipelago, where there are very, very few pine trees, and poverty levels are very high, it is a much needed and wonderful heartfelt expression of ceremony and culture. But, it is a different story if it is used to replace a once very decorated tree as a mechanism of deconstructing and destroying a culture.)

I have an immense library. If I tried to fit it into one of those tiny houses that are so popular today, it would never fit. I grew up in a house with a library. The chateaux, palazzos, castles and palaces I mentioned before, have tremendous libraries, with centuries of collections. When my kids look at my library, they call me a hoarder (excluding my son, I think he understands the value of it). But anyone who has spent any time in it (which my step kids do not), leaves very impressed with my collection.

My wife and I collect art, and antiques, and antiquities. There would be no room in these tiny houses to hold all of our collections. Our kids, at least, have an appreciation for the art, I believe. At least, they have expressed interest in what they would like to inherit one day. But here again, what is happening in the world around us? There is this new trend to buy NFT's of art, rather than buying art. Then the art piece is boxed up and stuck in some warehouse, where it will never be seen, but all these people own a little piece of it. Where is the value in that? More particularly, where is the cultural value in that?

If owning art gives you only a purely transactional relationship with the piece, you have no culture. If I was given the chance to own a piece of a Ruben, or a Monet, Van Dyck, or one of, my favorite 17th - 18th century European artists, a Fragonard, but that it would then be boxed and locked away, I would say, 'no thanks.'

Anyway, is America losing its culture? Is the value of creativity gone? Are we falling into a dystopic Baudrillardian nightmare where everything is nothing more than artificial mass produced imitations--simulacra--and culture collapses away, leaving tired memes, and a boring dependence on functionality?

What do you think?

 

LMAO!

Enough said!

 

We go out and collect greenery, including holly for the red berry colour, and make a kind of centre piece in front of the fireplace. That is it regarding decoration. We eat fairly normally with maybe a more expensive bottle of wine..
When the children were at home we would get a proper fir tree and decorate it together. The food thing was big then with cake being made months in advance to allow it to mature and all sorts of special stuff.
We do go to a family dinner on boxing day and I make the desserts but apart from that we hate the commercialisation of this holiday.
Absolutely everything now seems to not just be about how much is spent on all festivities and public holidays but on ensuring that everyone is aware of how much has been spent.
In my opinion it is fucking obscene!

 

I can understand the sentiment. Though, not being from a commonwealth country, we don't have a Boxing Day. My wife actually has spent very little on all her decorating (the ribbons, for example, mostly come from the dollar store). In my family, the ones who get the most gifts are the children (grandchildren in the case of my wife and I). Children don't care how much a gift costs as much as how fun it is, or, if it was what they wanted.

Traditionally, culture was a pursuit of the rich and powerful. Peasants did not collect art, for example, and throughout much of history, probably experienced relatively very little of it. But this does not mean commercialism and materialism is the essence of culture. There are French philosophers like Baudrillard that saw the shift of art collecting from only wealthy aristocrats and the most wealthy of the bourgeois to a broader class, including Middle Class individuals as a destructive force attacking the value of art. I disagree. The dissolution of the traditional peasant class should liberate art to a greater audience. Culture should not be connected to monetary value as much as to authenticity. You know, there is plenty of authentic art that is affordable to any budget, if you know how to find it.

It's the same with Christmas. My wife puts all those hours into completing a very beautiful work of art, even if she doesn't spend much money to create it. We're getting old, and our kids may not know what they are missing until its gone. And isn't that true for all of life?

 

We have an old fake tree that I have to assemble each year before she decorates and then I start the lights. But I did grow up with a real tree, and there is something very christmassy about a real pine tree in your house that makes the whole house smell like a pine tree.

But the thing is, at midnight on December 31st, the high priestess would come over and we would take the tree out into the back where she would perform a ritual, and after an hour the roots would grow out from the bottom of the tree and make their way into the ground where it would replant itself until the next year. You would have to watch your feet, because if the root took hold there, it would bury itself through your foot and into the ground. ...I might have made that part up.

 

Yes, you might have

 

I think decorations have gotton ugly.. I dont celebrate christmas anymore because to me this isnt christmas..

These tiny aweful looking LED pieces of garbage.. I want good C7/C9 bulbs like we had!!

I want things to be GOOD again

 

And the glass ornaments were very beautiful. We still have some----including several from 1963, that my mom made---one with her name and date, another with my dad's name and date, and another with my name and date. My sister still has the 4th one with her name and date. By date, I mean, 1963---the year she decorated the ornaments.

 

It is sad that Christmas has just become a commercial event to coerce Christians to buy things that they do not need, except for thier children. They can still give gifts to children, who have been good. Since the decoration of trees, is an old Celtic Festival, wherein people believed that decorated trees honored deceased relatives, reincarnated into living trees. The.use of dead trees seems problematic to me. If I were Trump I would change the Christmas Celebration to a Winter Solstice Festival,as it was in the past, and change the Birthday Celebration of "Jesus the Nazarene" to March 22, which may be closer to the Census date ordered by Caesar Augustus and the birth of the Christian Son of God.

 

The one common factor with all the rubbish.

"Made in China"

They are having a very merry Christmas. At our expense.

 

Like I said, Christmas is a cultural phenomenon, and we live in a culture of consumerism.

Here's something to think about. If you want a holiday that inspires spiritual growth and celebrates a spiritual miracle, you need to have that magic. Organized religion is about control, not about liberation, spiritual or other. Thus in Christianity, magic and miracles are of the past, and if it were to occur today in the blatantly naked form it was supposed to have happened in the past, it would be defined as evil. Organized religion takes those ancient days that were once used as an expression of a metaphysical reality, and turned them into nothing more than an anniversary.

Where is the magic of Christmas? It is so absent that we had to create a children's story of miracles around it to make it special. And we like to pretend that actually means something, so we have this popular narrative in Hollywood that Santa actually is real, and he somehow gets tangled up in an adventure in a modern day city--so that for a moment (as in a 2-hour movie), we can pretend in that magic once again. Or we look to adult themes like, love---yes, there's magic in that---but there is only so much magic there, and now we live in a time were the manufactured magic in a hallmark movie is so manufactured and trite, that we already know the whole pattern of the Christmas love story, and only the faces might be different.

The gift that Dickens gave us was to re-inspire some of that magic, in a day when the powers of industrialization were creating victims left and right---a moment of happiness in the darkness. But alas, this magic has played its way out in the post-modern deconstruction of meaning and value that we found after actually achieving whatever noble dreams the industrialists at his times had (underneath their plans for exploitation).

We are so alienated from the anniversarial story of magic for Christmas, that we respond to a tale of a young refugee couple seeking a safe place to have their baby by electing officials who will end the movement of refugees into your borders and by speaking out against refugees and immigrants.

Christians try to keep the magic of Christmas in some way. I remember as a youth, when I was too old for Santa, reading the Bible before going to sleep on Christmas Eve. I was excited to open presents the next morning, but I was searching for some kind of magic in the Bible---I didn't know what I would find, or how it would be-Christmassy magic, or even special---just something---in a book that was nearing 2000 years old. Needless to say, I didn't find anything. But I did wake up the next morning to the joy of opening gifts, and a simulated magic of Santa bringing presents-----just because it was a tradition in our family (and my youngest siblings still believed in Santa). But the spiritual magic--the reason for the holiday--is just feelings, purely existential.

And it is very likely that the magic of this time of the year, is buried within our subconscious from our ancestors, and we are drawn to it. Bringing a tree into our house is much older than our Celtic ancestors that deocrated it for their ancestors. It goes back to the paleolithic, and is a portal to the other side. And the idea of a man in a red suit, who might come down our chimney (a rationalized abstraction of him coming down the tree) to lay gifts at the base of the tree, goes deep into our past as well.

But all summer long, clear accross the Nation, there are groups of Natives holding Sun Dances and Vision Quests. (The Sun Dances, by the way, literally happen around a tree decorated with certain ritualistic items). There is magic in these ceremonies---visions, ecstatic experiences, many synchronicities. To become a part of these ceremonies is to experience the veil between this and the next reality being partially lifted.

Christians could seek this kind of experience as well-----in Christian mysticism.

But Western culture is not geared for such subjective experiences at the edge of physicality. Today's Post-Modern technologically driven world denies it wholesale before it can begin. And organized religion demonizes such experiences.

So where is that moment of happiness in the darkness of a world that is destroying meaning, value and authenticity, where every last human is being objectified into an exploited organic number, simply trying to survive? At least these cultural traditions, with their simulated magic, give us a break. A moment to make someone happy with a gift. A time to add color and decoration to an otherwise mundane existence. Yes, it is commercialized and all about mindless consumption, but that is our culture until we can come up with something better (...or eat the rich). That is why, with my wife's weeks of decorating and creating, something she does straight from her heart, that I wish the kids and grandkids would appreciate it more. When that aspect of Christmas is gone, then our connection to our past, and any bit of magic, and many other things, are lost. And life in the West will become truly mundane and meaningless.