Attention Christmas Cynics:

[Having noticed nearly a month long gap between posts, I have resolved to do another week's worth of ten-minute writings. To recap: Seven days, one post per day, written in ten-ish minutes, with relatively little forethought and edited with reasonable but not exacting vigor.]

This is for all of the Christmas Cynics out there:

You are wrong.

The holiday season is not merely an excuse for a vomit-inducing orgy of capitalistic consumer frenzy. Christmas is not simply a corporate-driven event designed to raise profits at the year's end. Hearing the same fifty or so Christmas songs in every store you enter is not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Placing Christmas lights on the exterior of your domicile is definitely worth getting a bit chilly and is definitely not some expression of your sublimated desire to keep pace with your neighbors. Taking your kids to see Santa at the mall is a good idea. Nativity scenes are good. "It's A Wonderful Life" is good. Eggnog is really good. And for crying out loud on a stick, going out and buying a real live Christmas tree is an absolute necessity unless you are allergic to them.

See, here's the problem: if you are an intelligent person, you tend to be cynical about certain things, and you should be. This is because you are not a mindless sheepheaded idiot. You will find a great deal of sarcasm in your soul when you hear that people care whether or not Ashley Simpson has done blah blah blah lately. Or that the U.S. Government is still finding new ways to bury the country in blah blah blah. Much of life is very ridiculous, and as a person with an above-average IQ, you notice these ridiculosities, whereas the everyday moron embraces them as though they mattered. This is not an entirely bad way to approach certain areas of life. In fact, it is such a reasonable approach to the world that it has for many people become the default reaction, which makes it not nearly as intelligent as it used to be. That is: It used to take a keen intellect to observe and report sarcastically on the ironies of life, but if you've over-honed that sense, it is actually significantly more difficult to put the sarcasm down and enjoy things such as blatant sentimentality, tradition, and beauty.

And that's the thing about Christmas cynics: they're missing the point. Yes, you are allowed to be a mite annoyed when you hear "Baby it's Cold Outside" for the fifty-third time while shopping for sixty-dollar picture frames at Pottery Barn, but that's not the point. As an intelligent person, it is your job to refocus your cynically-trained mind on the real point of the season, and embrace a little holiday beauty and sentiment. To wit:

The way white Christmas lights illuminate freshly fallen snow.

The smell of food baking when you walk into the family Christmas.

The fact that Tony Bennett has the perfect voice for singing "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town."

The pure, unadulterated joy of Christmas morning when you were a kid.

A blazing fireplace.

The guy down the block whose light display can be seen from a low earth orbit.

The quiet beauty of a candlelit Christmas eve church service.

Presents! How can you not love presents?

The way a snow-covered woods looks after a day-long winter storm.

Every ornament on your family tree that you made by hand between the ages of three and thirteen.

The familiarity, comfort, and love of family.


So. Just let go for a while and simply enjoy it.