Rudolph the Green-Eyed Reindeer

This is going to be another STFU post.

Note to everyone, get out of everyone else's holiday bidness. Believe it or not, this is meant to be a message of peace on earth/good will towards men (and women, thank you Batman). Can everyone please just back off and let the holidays flow? Are you really so insecure in your own holiday spirit you have to spit on someone else's? Or are you so jealous that you think someone is getting something out of the holidays that you aren't?

The following types of people need to STFU.

• Faux News kicking off the annual war against the so-called war on Christmas. Actually anyone saying "war on Christmas." There were actual wars on Christmas (where people died) as well as wars to force Christmas (where people died). We need a Christmas version of Godwin's Law.
  
• Ann Coulter screeching about how Kwanza's a fake holiday. Ok, Ann Coulter screeching about anything. Please, please, please STFU!
  
• Christians howling how it's Jesus's birthday (it's not, but whatever) and we're all going to hell if we don't embrace Christmas their way.
  
• The anti-consumerists' shrill smugness about the materialism and consumerism of the holiday.
  
• Anyone attacking anyone for wearing a Christmas sweater. They're ugly, I assume you know it, I assume you choose it anyway for your own reasons. In the spirit of the live-and-let-live holiday spirit I embrace, I take a leave of absence from the Fashion Police Brigade during the holidays.
  
• Anyone attacking anyone for wearing a Santa hat.
  
• Any Salvation Army collector who gives me a guilt trip for not donating when I've literally passed 10 Santa-wearing bell ringers in a five block radius (how the hell do you know I haven't donated yet!)
  
• Anyone who cringingly defends their Santa hat/Christmas sweater/candy-cane earrings. Wear it loud and proud folks if you're going to wear it at all!
  
• People insisting if you're not spending the day with family, you're screwing up the holiday somehow.
  

Here's what I think really goes on during this holiday season:

• There is no war on Christmas. There is a battle to celebrate any way we damn well please. This probably started with Catholic kids sick of going to midnight mass and then having to wait for their parents to drag their tired butts out of bed and have coffee before we could get to the presents. So mass slipped to 4 or 5 PM until that interfered with Christmas Eve dinner and was given up all together. Or something like that. Not that I have personal experience with that.
  
• Christmas morning can be absolutely magical for a kid, done right. And that means lots of presents arranged in a magically artful manner by parents who learn to love their bratty kids all over again when they see that light in their eyes when they really believe they've been good enough for Santa to shower such largess upon them. Which makes them actually be less bratty for a little bit. If consumerism can accomplish that, go team!
  
• Most people who are Christian, really Christian, don't give a shit about how others celebrate their holidays. They do their advent calendars, Christmas mass, nativity scenes, and are perfectly happy incorporating Jesus and the pagan tree into their holiday. As well as inviting the neighborhood Jews over for Christmas dinner (as long as they bring the ziti!) Stop giving them a bad name with your phony outrage.
  
• 2000 years ago Catholics made up a holiday. If someone wants to make up another one in the 60's, why does this bother anyone? For those it does bother, don't you believe you will never see them in the after life anyway? Can't your self-righteousness be enough or do you have to rain on everyone's parade? I don't know much about Kwanzaa, but I bet my Barbie dream house it's better than midnight mass.
  
• Don't let the fashion police ruin your holiday season. Yes, most Christmas sweaters are dorky. But also let the fat old guy have his one shining fashion moment where no one looks as good as he does in red and white. And stop cringing when you do embrace the fashion faux pas that is Christmas. If you love it, flaunt it! I have a fringed coat and I don't care how tacky it is. I love it. At least you fit in once a year. My fringed coat never does (except at the musical Hair).
  
• There are millions of us who love our families but don't necessarily want to be around them at all at the same time in a forced tradition that we abandoned long ago for very good reasons. Or we don't want to spend our few free days off of work traveling to everyone else's house. How someone defines family is up to them. Also, it's two free days off of work, let us figure out how we want to spend it.
  
• And I am not forgetting the smug anti-materialists here either. You piss me off just as much as anyone else. You're just as preachy about how people choose to spend their holidays. Spend it however you want, spend as much or as little as you want, just get out of everyone else's business about it. I have a lovely time picking out gifts for people based on things I've discovered that I really want to share with others. That's my thing, not yours. So what? Why cannot I do my thing and you do yours and we're all happy? You people are as pushy and condescending as the bad Christians in trying to define what a holiday should be for me or anyone else.
  

Seems like the only people who are live-and-let-live during the holidays are the Jews. Damn, if it weren't for bacon maybe I'd just join them for the peace during the holidays (and the incredibly awesome Xanadu/Hanukah song at last night's Seattle Women's Chorus).

Happy Holidays and if you don't like the way someone else celebrates it, STFU and figure out how you want to celebrate your own.