Resistance is Futile
There are apparently three kinds of people in this world. There are Star Wars people. There are Star Trek people. There are people that make fun of Star Wars and Star Trek people. In the Next Generation series of Star Trek there was an enemy known as the borg. Not being a huge Star Trek fan, I couldn’t tell you exactly what the borg was or what the point was, but I just remember it spreading like some kind of virus.
They always uttered the same line: “resistance is futile.” I’ve come to imagine a lot of things through that prism these days. We have a local hospital that has taken over an old shopping center and forced those businesses out. It became the hospital borg. In a similar way, Fox News has levied a generational war on behalf of Christmas. Resistance is futile.
Apparently, there is this unspoken and unknown force trying to change everyone into a happy holidays contingent. One could imagine Starbucks being convinced that an unnamed coffee shop were trying to muscle in on their territory or maybe Jack n the Box suddenly threatening McDonald’s. Christmas has about as much of a chance of being overwhelmed in any so-called war.
Instead, you drive through neighborhoods and see Christmas lights go up immediately after Halloween. The local radio station converts over to Christmas music at the same time and blares all Christmas music all the time through the new year. Mariah Carey starts humming her bars once the last firework goes off on the fourth of July.
On the one hand, I’m not sure there is really any harm in it. Is there anything wrong with becoming a member of the borg? On the other hand, I’m also not sure that the season retains its meaning when it begins to encroach on October and completely engulfs Thanksgiving. Resistance is futile.
Fox has nearly perfected the art of playing the victim all the while acting like the quintessential bully. I suppose that’s usually how these things work. Obnoxious people should feel free to shout “Merry Christmas” in the face of those that obviously don’t celebrate it because it is their right. Thus, we somehow ignore one of the meanings of the season by ignoring civility and acting like a jackass.
We have always resisted the temptation of decorating before Thanksgiving. It is the least we can do. However, I have decided that the problem is people like Carey. We need some Thanksgiving songs. Maybe someone can write a little ditty about football, turkey, and stuffing. Anything that could stave off the Christmas borg would be greatly appreciated.
We celebrate Fall/Autumn until after Thanksgiving. Then I turn the decorations to Christmas, not one day sooner. I also don’t put of Halloween until the middle of October and strike it the day after.
1I hate Christmas jingles but love carols. I used to join as church in September so I could sing Christmas carols and then disappear after the holiday. All of this from a big time non believer who just likes to decorate and sing for the season.
As far as Fox liars and the war on Christmas, bah humbug. They have a war on truth.
Item posted on November 8 in Yellowdog Granny: “The War on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November.”
2lol Nick, we are in the Whoopi Goldberg social science camp of science fiction. Guess that make us Guinanites. We don’t war on Christmas, by that point we’re exhausted from fighting our own war for the truth against Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. We look at Halloween as the little fun break that takes place between two holidays of unadulterated horse droppings of historical fiction.
We’ll enjoy Christmas with family and friends knowing Christmas is for kids. Leaving that imaginary “war” to be fought out between Fox Not the News and retail stores.
3And Michael Flynn now says there should be “one religion” in the United States. I wonder how Fox news feels about that.
4I agree with Flynn.. and it should be Pastafarianism. All bow down to his noodly wonderfulness.
5Bob @5,
I have two pasta servers with eyeballs so they look like the Flying Spaghetti Monster when in the dish. Available at Ototo, along with various Nessie kitchen items.
6As far as I’m concerned, Christmas starts at noon on December 24th, and ends the evening of January 5th. Before that are the four weeks of Advent and after that is Epiphany. I would love for stores to NOT have Christmas decoration, and NOT play Christmas Carols or other Christmas songs. I’m not too fond of Santa Clause either. On the other hand, I’m always in Church on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning. I think the Puritans were on the right track when they banned the celebration of Christmas.
7Kitti @ 2,
8I saw a meme which expanded that sentiment, “The War on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November, and the Klaus Kingdom respects the Black Friday Accords.”
The war on Christmas cannot end until Christmas gives up its illegal occupation of the month of November.
9Ugh. Forgot to credit Yellowdog Granny for that. Then I saw Kitti @ #2. I’m behind a step today.
10For future reference Borg is an abbreviation of “cyborg.” They assimilate cultures because resistance is futile, but it’s better to go down fighting.
Christmas was manacled to Thanksgiving when Macy’s staged its first Thanksgiving Parade, featuring Santa Claus. Soon it had metastasized to take over all of November. I for one am glad supply lines broke down due to the pandemic and entire container ships laden with plastic wreaths and glittery paper are becalmed off the Port of Los Angeles. We can also thank Louis DeJoy for crippling the postal service, discouraging card-sending. Let’s not lose the advantage!
11As an unrepentant Episcopalian, I immerse myself in Advent after Thanksgiving and avoid consumerist crud assiduously. That means I’ve never shopped on Black Friday or Cyber Saturday, and I avoid all stores during this time of year (until it’s necessary to get things on their wish list for a family on our local Angel Tree). Our decor goes up a couple of days before Christmas and stays up for all 12 days of Christmas until the magi show up on January 6th. Thank goodness the family prefers homemade stuff for the season and never got sucked into the vortex of (to quote “The Graduate”) ‘PLASTICS’!
I was, however, blindsided, by a trip to a hardware store 2 weeks ago where red and green decorations were already on full display ….Looks as if errands will now be confined to TEN months of the year!
12There is a strong connection between Star Trek and Pomona College, thanks to a scriptwriter who was a fellow alum. He introduced a great many occurrences of the number “47” to honor a Pomona cult, started in the summer of 1964 by a group of NIH prefreshman interdisciplinary science trainees. (Full disclosure: I was one of that group.) You can find some of the history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_(number)
and video clips of a sampling of 47 occurrences here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8HqRp8MdNs
Some sources claim that the Borg was named after Oldenborg language dormitory at Pomona, which was noted for absorbing students and providing all the necessities so that they never reappeared. Buttermilk Sky’s version suggests that the Pomona connection may be apocryphal. But the 47 connection is definitely not.
My fellow NIH group-ers have been delighted that 47 is alive and well at Pomona, even to the point that the bookstore makes quite a lot selling 47 merchandise (t shirts, mugs, who knows.) New freshmen are taught about 47 upon arrival. It’s sort of awe-inspiring to have helped to start a cult.
13Long ago and far away, slipstream worked at a K-Mart. Summer job during college. The store manager instructed slipstream to begin putting Christmas wares out on the shelves. This was about September 15. slipstream, of course, objected. You know how I am.
The manager was actually a decent guy and was embarrassed about displaying Christmas wares during September. He actually got out the directive from upper K-Mart management and showed it to me. It said the entire Christmas department was to be fully running by September 1. The manager said he had stalled as long as he could and was at risk of being fired.
I was not heartbroken when Walmart came along and (in Borg-like fashion) wiped out K-Mart. From Wikipedia article on K-Mart: The chain is expected to have only twelve stores left, six of them in the continental US, by the end of 2021,
14My mom pounded into us that you “don’t decorate a dirty house”. That keeps me from decorating until the very last minute, when I finally get around to cleaning the house.
15Being of the Presbyterian persuasion, I decorate in Advent – it starts on the 28th this year. By following a church calendar, I’ve given myself time to enjoy Halloween and Thanksgiving. A friend’s family is far flung. They started twenty years ago meeting at the parents in Dallas on the second Sunday in Advent for a T-Day/Christmas time together. That has worked and the various sibs can spend T-Day with the in-laws and Christmas at home with their children.
16Ba! Humbug! Thanksgiving should be renamed ‘bad immigration policy day!’ as the Native Americans should have kill everyone coming ashore. But being more civilized than the invaders they welcomed them, and were killed off asap for their efforts! Xmas? Meh! I do the winter solstice with the coven. Don’t need capitalist BS to have me waste money on trivia.
17RE. L.Long, see “New England once hunted and killed humans for money. We’re descendants of the survivors”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/15/new-england-once-hunted-and-humans-for-money-were-descendents-of-the-survivors
18Spent the evening tonight at ZooLights, an annual celebration at the Denver Zoo that fills the grounds with 2 million lights of all descriptions: animal outlines, wrapped trees, hanging lanterns, projected patterns on the ground. I don’t mind at all that they begin preparing for the show in late September or August, and reveal it now, before Thanksgiving.
https://www.9news.com/article/life/holidays/holiday-guide/denver-zoo-lights-2021/73-8fc08581-d8ef-413f-87eb-230a03695b01
Happy holidays … whatever they may be.
19Nick.
20There are two kinds of people in this world.
Those who delineate people into groups.
And those who don’t.
I guess there’s nothing going on in Texas politics,so this is the filler until something happens.
21Oh, yeah. Some guy named Beto is running for governor…and we’re entertained? by rumintaions about Christmas starting too early.
I categorically refuse to do anything related to Christmas (except possibly shop on-line for something I know for sure someone wants) until after December 1. The months before that belong to Halloween and Thanksgiving. About December 15, I am happy to put up a tree and hang the outside lights.
They will both be taken down On January 6.
Christmas is wonderful, but it has no business invading other months, except by treaty. Since Orthodox Christmas is either January 6 or 7, depending on the country, I’m OK with taking up a small slice of January. Apart from that that, months have their own attractions. They don’t need Christmas, too.
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