I had a conversation at work today (because in retail you work right up until the point until you’d rebel if you DIDN’T have to work) with a straight white man. I *SAY* it was a conversation, but it was mostly one-sided. I mentioned the current politically correct climate in which we all should say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. How there are fundamentalist groups out there with nothing better to do than to spread God’s message of love and peace by haranguing harmless customer service associates for not saying “Merry Christmas.”
And this straight white man said, right, because it’s Christmas. It’s not “the holidays”.
I said: Do you know to whom you speak, all the time? Perhaps they’re Jewish, Kwanzaa celebrants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Pagan, Agnostic, Check-marked “Other”, or Just Plain Don’t Care.
He said: This is a Christian country, and it’s a Christian holiday, and so we should say “Merry Christmas.”
I do so love straight white men with their easy sense of entitlement and their occasional bouts of astounding ignorance. Especially if we define “love” as “find myself mortified, embarrassed, belittled and enraged by”.
We (the Christian White Men) were here first, he said. I replied that I didn’t know he was Native American. He responded that even the Native Americans got here from Russia/China. I didn’t know that the Native Americans massacred and displaced a indigent population to take over this continent, but I kept *this* thought to myself.
And the first 13 colonies were Christian colonies, he said. Trying to keep more and more quiet, I thought yes, maybe, but they weren’t the RIGHT Christians in the eyes of the lands they left (amazing how often that happens) and so many people came here in search of religious freedom. Other popular reasons to come to America were love of money and conquest, and because you didn’t have a choice (referring to the English criminals who were planted in the prison colony of Georgia, and all slaves of all colors).
As for Christmas being a Christian holiday… really. Even though Jesus’s birth can be placed by the scripture ITSELF as being July/August due to the fact that shepherds don’t have flocks out in the fields during winter? This reminds me very much of Eostre — oh, excuse me, EASTER — where the ignorant but devoted celebrate Jesus’s triumphant return out of a chocolate egg laid by a rabbit. No, not at all pagan.
But in the end I received a flurry of denial from the straight white man about how this is how he thinks, this is how he’s going to do it, this is how it should be done, directly from the Great White God to his ear, and that’s all there is to it.
Let’s pause for a moment and imagine the welter of mortification and anger inside your humble host, Vox Mortuum. Let’s pause and consider how hotly my blood demanded a curb-stomping. Even though I should be used to such shabby treatment by those who have that *direct* line to the Big Invisible Sky Judge, it still comes as such a shock to experience it. “Never surprised, continually amazed” is my motto.
It wears me out, too. I’m hyper-vigilant and easily provoked, as are most of the people who share one of my many psychological conditions. As he was muttering his rant forcefully under his breath my hackles raised, adrenaline coursed through my veins and I prepared to fight or run. Being at a civilized office environment, however, means that one can do neither. Even if your feelings and sense of self are belittled or lessened by others.
But still I demurred, as a well-trained Southern Woman is bound to do, and backed away from the topic. There’s no convincing the ignorant, the red of neck and belligerent of mind. I’m sorry that I did it now, that I rolled over and didn’t stick to my guns. I’m sorry also that I don’t have the bravery to report him to HR. I don’t want to make my workplace hostile, and when you are a minority of whatever flavor that is sadly always a possibility.
Now I’m sure at this point all the family members and my thousands of ex-husbands stalking mefollowing me through this journal are wondering: Just what does Vox believe? “Does it really matter?” I would respond. Opinions are like sphincters; everyone has one but usually it’s better if we don’t share them with others.
I can tell you *A* belief though; a story, a myth, a dream just like all other human beliefs.
The earth, the mother of us all, grows tired and weak after giving the bounty of the harvest. Her energy recedes. The leaves fall, the sap sinks, the grasses die, flowers fade, and the weather grows cold. She dies her annual death and on the darkest longest night of the year her god-husband sacrifices his life to revive her, lest we all perish with her.
We remember this yearly event by the arrival of the man in blood-red, bearing precious gifts in the snow. Unfortunately in this consumeristic saccharine age we’ve gelded him and his sacrifice, and we call him Santa Claus.
I bemoan this weakening of our primal heritage, at the same time I say “Could I have a Nintendo DS game?”
Merry Godsdeath, ya’ll.
