There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #4 – October Night by Todd Chappelle (2014)

Oh, it's on, Hallmark Channel! It's fucking on!

For years on end now, the talking heads in the right wing media have been screaming and whining about a supposed "War on Christmas" propped up by liberals in this country. We have to hear their self-righteous talking points replayed every single holiday season. They get weepy when someone says "Season's Greetings" to them, and insist that people say the word "Christmas"... or else they will... well, you know... They seem to start up a nuclear countdown clock annually for when Starbucks rolls out their new holiday cups, and then go apoplectic when the cups don't don't have what they feel is the right amount of Jesus sprinkled on them. This is all the evidence we need to prove that this group – that thrills at calling liberals "snowflakes" because they are supposedly sooooo precious and breakable – are actually the biggest whiners and babies out there when they don't get a thing they want. If this were built into a Speak 'n' Spell, it would go "Sean Hannity says, 'Waaaaaaa... mama!!'" 

The roots of this imagined "War on Christmas" are, when you dig to its deepest point, purely a racial thing. What these storefront white supremacists – you know, the prettier ones they can actually put before the public on display, as if the TV screen were a shop window – are really upset about is what they believe to be encroachment upon their precious Christmas Day by three of the four racial groups they hate and fear the most: the Jews with Hanukkah, African-Americans with Kwanzaa, and occasionally (but not this year and not for a good while, because the holy month shifts consistently on the shorter Islamic calendar), the Muslims with Ramadan. (The fourth group they hate and fear would be Hispanics, but they get Christmas right, as long as they say it in 'Murican.) These pinhead "Warriors for Christmas" bristle at the thought of their addled brains needing to be inclusive and consider everyone else that might be enjoying the same general holiday season with their families and friends, whether or not it involves Christmas. 

Look, not everyone celebrates Christmas, and that is exactly what drives Warriors for Christmas batty. They hate that everyone is not the same as them, and not celebrating the same things the way that they determine is correct. Don't want to play by our rules? Fuck off! Everyone else that doesn't look like them to too scary, too foreign, and not 'Murican! Me, I'm an atheist and very open about it; I just don't pester people with it the way that Christopher Hitchens did while he was alive and Richard Dawkins still does before he is dead. That's not my game. I don't believe in your god, and you had better be fine with that, because I am just fine with your fairy tales. I want everyone to get along, and I want people to believe how they need to believe in order to find some form of solace with the endless, dark void that will, not so much confront them, but consume them at the ends of their lives.

This "War on Christmas" junk angers me beyond belief. As I said, I am an atheist, but I freakin' love Christmas, and I don't shy away from it at all. Jen and I like to take an afternoon and drive around to look at Christmas decorations on houses every year. My friend Adrian would say that I what I really celebrate is Saturnalia, and he is both wrong and right about that. The roots of what we celebrate today commonly are to be found partially in that ancient Roman celebration, but there is so much more from other pagan traditions and folk beliefs and also from, yes, Christianity, that it really is a separate thing from any ancient holiday that inspired it. There is a way into the holiday that is as open to almost anyone from anywhere as to be all-encompassing. Like other holidays, we pick and choose whatever trappings we wish to employ, and no one except a truly devout fundamentalist is going to whine about it. And if they want to whine about it, that's fine; just don't whine on my time. 

But even with my rampant atheism, Christmas is not just a "presents, Rudolph, and Santa Claus" thing with me. I enjoy the trappings of the traditional Christian-based holiday as well, many of the hymns (along with the popular, secular carols), and manger scenes can be lovely when they aren't glowing in crazy-ass neon on someone's front porch. I may not say the prayers if I am in a situation where someone actually says prayers today, but I remain respectful, close my eyes, and let my friends or family have their moment with their deity. And then, pass those goddamned potatoes, please... that bowl needs to be emptied! 

Out in the aisles of your local box store, it's a whole different matter to me. The stores jump to Christmas far too quickly, and they have since, well, forever. Personally, I don't ever think of shopping before perhaps mid-November, and hardly ever do it until early December anyway, so the shopping early thing is lost on me. I suppose there are true wackos out there who do these things early, especially moms if they have very large families. And if they are shopping early, they aren't even celebrating the "real Christmas" anyway, you know, the one where the Christ child is born (though most likely not on Dec. 25). What they are celebrating is the American commercial side of the holiday, where it is more important to get lots of prezzies than to not give giant corporations loads of money so they can merge with smaller companies and become ever more giant corporations. They are celebrating the secular side, not the religious version. So, what's their beef? Why do they have to get all up in arms if those who don't necessarily identify as "Christian" wish to say "Season's Greetings!" instead?

In the real world, I say "Merry Christmas!" equally as much as I say "Season's Greetings!" I like saying these things to people, even in just passing, and I do it just to have something different to say than "How are you?" or "Hello..." meekly as they go by me. But I try to size up the situation before I say either one. You might even say this sizing up of potential hearers of my greeting comes down to a form of racial profiling, an act which is bad in most cases, but I feel very apt when a "War on Christmas" is being fought by only the one side that perceives it as such. This is how I do it... 

If I – a very blonde, white male myself – am speaking to someone who seems uptight about life in general, and they seem on the edge of pitching a bitch about whatever you say, regardless – which, the bulk of the time, means they are very clearly, translucently white – I say "Merry Christmas!" In ALL other cases, I say, with a sincere and very pleasant smile, "Season's Greetings!"

Because I know they aren't babies and won't cry about it later...

The Real War: The War on Halloween

Meanwhile, let's talk about the real war that has been occurring since time immemorial: The War on Halloween. Just like in the retail stores, Christmas tiptoes in ever earlier each year on television. And the first salvo was taken this year by the Hallmark Channel; you know, those creeps who prop up most of the major and some minor holidays just so they can increase their card, paper, ribbon, ornament, and stuffed animal sales. Hallmark Channel has the biggest boner for Christmas than any other channel on cable. They even program an entire month for Christmas in July.

The worst part though, is their annual Countdown to Christmas. During most of the year, in addition to their most banal, crappy movies (I've seen a few here and there in order to learn the truth, so I know), Hallmark likes to shoot down Thanksgiving altogether and push their Christmas movie programming to nearly two months ahead of the actual holiday. This puts them into late October.

Jen and I use the Hallmark Channel. Well, we only use it until their Countdown to Christmas crap starts, and then there is a reason we turn to something else. Seriously, we don't really watch it so much as we use it as a nightlight while we sleep, because they play reruns of Frasier, Cheers, and I Love Lucy from about 1:00 a.m. until 8:00 a.m. when we rise. Jen can't sleep without the TV on, and we have to find something comforting for me to be able to actually sleep at all. So we choose a channel that has something we both love, and all is well. However, I am often awake in the middle of the night, so I end up watching at least one episode of Frasier more often than not. 

One night a couple weeks back, a horrendous Hallmark Channel ad came on during Frasier that almost immediately sent me looking for an axe to destroy the television. The ad starts out with what looks like a big, friendly house with pumpkins on the porch. (Naturally, the porch is painted white.) But then it becomes apparent that the scenes carved into the Jack-O-Lanterns are actually wintry, Christmas scenes. The last carving is of stockings hanging over a fireplace. Then two final pumpkins are shown as the camera pans upward. The first says "Countdown to Christmas" and the second bears the channel's name. A graphic then shows the date of October 28.. THREE WHOLE DAYS BEFORE HALLOWEEN EVEN HAPPENS!

This is the shit that drives me crazy! Why in such a rush to get to Christmas, a season that causes more depression than any other holiday? Can't wait to be upset and frustrated from shopping tension and a depleted bank account? What is the damn hurry? And things like this happen every year – for decades – with stores that start taking down shelves of Halloween stuff days before Halloween occurs, and with church organizations seeking to tamp down what they consider a "demonic" holiday (I wil have a piece on the vile but thoroughly entertaining Bob Larson in a few days).  

Here's a fun and very clever song that ties in with my "War on Halloween". It is a parody of the classic hymn, O Holy Night, and is sung quite nicely by Mr. Todd Chappelle, a comic singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania. I have heard many of Todd's other songs, but when I heard this one on Ben's Wacky Radio, I just had to add it to my mixtape for this year. Enjoy...

October Night [A parody of O Holy Night]
Words by Todd Chappelle

Original Music by Adolphe Adam (1847)

"October night, we should be carving pumpkins
Instead the stores have their Christmas displays
Can't stand the sight of Santa and his reindeer
Please take them down, we still have 80 shopping days

No Christmas trees, no giant plastic snowmen
We don't need Santa on Columbus Day
Screw Halloween, and also screw Thanksgiving
I don't want to fight
I haven't even raked my leaves

This just isn't right

On this October night"


Todd's got the right idea here. Just take it right to 'em. Look, he even throws Halloween and Thanksgiving right under the bus tires just to prove how much of a social crime it is that Christmas is all over the goddamned place this early before the actual holiday.

Christians and right wing groups make themselves look like the victims by saying their rights are being trampled by political correctness and the expansion of civil rights to everyone else in America. I mentioned the four racial groups that make up what is considered the menace in the fake "War on Christmas", but in the "War on Halloween," the LGBTQ-plus-whatever-else crowd, by and large, has adopted Halloween as their special day of the year, with many people even calling it "Gay Christmas". I don't have a problem with this, because any day can be what you need it to be. Halloween is mine to celebrate my way, and anyone else can make it theirs, too, and do it their way. But, largely, the same groups that don't like Christmas being "Season's Greeting"-ed to death tend to not look too kindly on gay rights, marriage and whatever else they have fought for and rightfully won for themselves. So, why not silently and stealthily eat away at Halloween's exposure by lengthening Christmas' reach on television, in the stores, and in the public eye. 

"What are you doing over there? Halloween? Look, we have Christmas over here! Shiny, glistening Christmas! Is that candy? Mere candy? Bah! We have presents over here... colorfully wrapped presents! You never know what you might get!"

Maybe all of this is Tim Burton's fault. He had Jack Skellington take over Christmas over twenty years ago, and the two holidays blended. That could not have sat well with the religious right, though most people don't have a problem attending the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland every Halloween and straight through December. Jack Skellington has taken that over as well, and most people seem fine with it. (Myself, I prefer the traditional Haunted Mansion, but I like both.) I am pretty certain a whole lot of the people riding it probably identify as Christians, and even if they don't like it, they seem to keep going in droves. On the flip side, I am 100% unlikely to ever ride anything at a theme park that denies evolution, so has the stronger sense of values?

So, maybe the real problem are the talking heads in the right wing media, tossing about barbed, farcical darts willy-nilly in order to hit anything that supports their dark agenda for America. Why not just make up and scream ceaselessly about an imagined "War on Christmas" just to get people riled up for no reason?

That's exactly what I am doing with this "War on Halloween" stuff... just 'cause I can... 

RTJ

And, before I go, here's a video of Todd doing the song live on stage. The guy has some lovely pipes...

Buy Todd's music on iTunes and check out his website at http://www.toddchappelle.com/.