The Most? Wonderful? Time? of the Year

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The holidays are upon us, and with them a dizzying panoply of mixed messages from advertisers, shopping centers, cable news and print media – and, last but not least, the bloated catalogue of Christmas movies that millions of Americans watch year after year. Adding to this year’s holiday cacophony is the punditocracy’s post-election panic about family estrangement over politics and the shaming, implicit and explicit, of those who will not prop up a false family (and by extension national) “unity.” How dare anyone refuse to give toxic relatives a pass, thereby enabling their bad behavior, especially during this “sacred” time of year. There has never been space in America’s Christmas culture for those who, for any reason, feel alienated at this time of year, but in the aftermath of an awful election, the legacy media’s peace-on-earth police are laying it on thick.

The Christian-capitalist colonialist project, begun in the fourth century when the imperial Roman Church began to appropriate the winter festivals of European Pagans, give them a Christian facelift, and integrate them into the liturgical calendar, now manifests itself not only on our TV screens, where we are told that greed and consumerism run counter to “the spirit of Christmas,” but also in an abundance of often trashy, Christmas-themed merchandise that now hits American store shelves before Halloween.

In our society, characterized as it is by Christian hegemony, Christmas programming on the radio, the TV, and the big screen heavily outweighs any offerings available for those who celebrate other winter holidays or hold no special observances at this time of year. Even so, it will never be enough for the aggrieved Christian scolds who use every platform they can to proclaim that there is a “war on Christmas.” You probably associate that ugly “tradition” with FOX News, but in fact it’s much older. Meanwhile, only the Christians are waging any sort of war for the cultural dominance they already possess.

But hey – whispers the voice that rises out of the holiday hubbub – don’t think too much about the contradictions and aggravations of Christmas in the United States. After all, this is “the most wonderful time of the year,” and if you don’t feel that way you probably just need a little Christmas miracle. You just need to believe, to have faith, to rediscover your capacity for childlike wonder. Oh, and of course, to smile more. And if you can’t? Well, then, there’s clearly something wrong with you.

The thing is, the moment we’re made to feel like we “should” be happy or joyful or cheerful, the harder it is to authentically be any of those things. This premise seems obvious when you spell it out like that, and yet the tension between experiencing cheer and feeling obligated to be cheerful – inherently a non-cheerful experience – runs through much of American society, contaminated as it is by toxic positivity. And nowhere, with the possible exceptions of certain corporate workplaces and culty exercise studios, is the imperative to be positive more baked in than in Christmas movies and the expectations they create.

To be sure, in the age of streaming, we can perhaps – at least if we’re not subject to family demands and expectations – avoid Christmas movies altogether. Or we can pick and choose among options including the straight-up racist classics of the 1940s and 50s such as Holiday Inn (1942) and White Christmas (1954); the very Boomer (and increasingly bizarre) Rankin and Bass children’s productions of the 1960s and 70s; more irreverent offerings like A Christmas Story (1983) or Jingle all the Way (1996); the sappy, heteronormative white feminist fantasies proffered by Hallmark movies; newer tearjerkers like 2020’s Jingle Jangle; or any number of variations on How the Grinch Stole Christmas or A Christmas Carol.

Jingle Jangle, a story about a quirky toy-making genius who isolates himself and loses contact with his adult daughter after his notebook of ideas is stolen by his erstwhile apprentice, is perhaps the most interesting of these for the way it deals seriously with family estrangement, and evident (if not explicitly addressed) depression. But even it ultimately fails to transcend the classic Christmas formula through which “Christmas magic” (along with, in this case, the toymaker’s granddaughter) redeems lost souls, heals deep rifts, and brings people together.

From It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) and Elf (2003), the American Christmas film canon teaches us that family ties are sacrosanct, and that at Christmas, with or without literal supernatural intervention, the cynical and greedy will be either defeated or converted. Yes, many Christmas movies acknowledge how stressful this time of year can be, and some even acknowledge how hard it can be to deal with painful loss at a time when we’re “supposed” to be festive, but none of them can just sit with those darker feelings. Canonical Christmas movies are only allowed to have happy endings.

The real world doesn’t work that way, of course. Many Americans are lonely at Christmas. Far too many are houseless. And many of us feel stress from the increased traffic and the constant demand to spend, even while Christmas movies tell us, as Dr. Seuss put it, that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store.”

But doesn’t it? Black Friday used to occupy a single day. Now it starts on Thanksgiving and continues past Friday with Small Business Saturday (first marked in 2010), Cyber Monday (2005), and the latest new “tradition,” Giving Tuesday (2012), because I guess if we throw some charity into the mix, all the cognitive dissonance this season generates will just go away?

Some of us are simply not able to sweep the contradictions of the season under the rug. Furthermore, certain life events – childhood abuse, the death of a loved one, religious trauma – may make it hard to find joy in Christmas. And then there are those who don’t celebrate Christmas because they’d rather observe their own religious traditions, who can’t step outside or turn on the radio without being bombarded with the trappings of the Christian holiday. Yes, a secularized Christmas is theoretically available to all, but not everyone wants it.

In short, there are a number of reasons people might feel ambivalent, upset, or depressed during the holidays. But if those of us who don’t have an endless supply of Christmas cheer to draw on fail to mask and carry on with business as usual, we are labeled “grinches” or “Scrooges.”

This Christmas promises to be a particularly challenging one with respect to family estrangement. According to recent polling done over a 24-hour period in early November, a full half of American adults are estranged from a close relative. Of those, 40% report that they are estranged specifically over political differences. Of those estranged because of political differences, nearly half became estranged only over the past year, with a significant proportion of them becoming estranged specifically over the last month. It is no coincidence that the month in question coincided with the end of a particularly ugly election cycle, culminating in the election of the repulsive fascist Donald Trump to a second term as president. Predictably, he has never been, and almost certainly never will be, held accountable for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election by egging on an insurrectionist mob that temporarily halted the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, 2021.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, one of my close friends cut off all contact with her parents, making the perfectly valid decision that her mental health would improve if she no longer had to deal with their QAnon conspiracy theories, evangelical apocalypticism, general narcissism, and enthusiastic willingness to vote to take her rights away. In the time since, she has indeed been much happier. But America’s culture of toxic positivity, our Christmas movies, and of course our legacy media offer no comfort to someone like her. Instead, they would saddle her with shame.

Take, for example, this absurd New York Times op-ed from November 27, penned by one Dr. Orma Guralnik. Guralnik is – I am not making this up – a reality TV couples therapist, and in her op-ed, she tells us the story of Louisa (who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris) and Isaac (who voted for Trump). The two of them, Guralnik explains, had been together for over two decades, but they were now horrified by each other’s political choices. Louisa, who reportedly works with undocumented immigrants, very reasonably wondered of her husband, “Who is he? Is he even kind, loving? Does he care about people?”

In my view, Guralnik should have told Louisa a divorce was likely her best option. But the couples therapy industry, infused as it is with de facto Christian, mainstream American values, doesn’t encourage raising the question of whether a married couple should stay together. Instead, it focuses on “saving” marriages. Guralnik suggested ways to put Louisa and Isaac on that course. She also explicitly extrapolated her approach to the broader American political divide, once again exhorting the oppressed to empathize with their oppressors, putting their own needs and feelings aside in the service of a phony unity and the American status quo. And after all, isn’t that the spirit of Christmas?

I don’t hate Christmas these days, but I despise the messaging that family (and political) unity must be embraced at all costs, which amounts to unity through conformity and repression, coming at the expense of those on the margins. I’m not currently completely estranged from any relatives, but many of my relationships have been strained by my departure from right-wing politics and Christianity, and above all by the inability of most of my conservative Christian relatives to fully accept my queerness. Given that they undoubtedly also voted for Trump, I am in no mental and emotional state to spend Christmas with them this year, and I made the conscious choice not to go back to Indiana for the family celebration. This despite the fact that I really would like to spend some time with just my parents, whose views have grown much more humane over the years. 

About Christmas in general, I am ambivalent. For me, the holiday is riddled with religious trauma, and further complicated by the politics of the vast majority of the people I grew up with. My enjoyment of anything related to Christmas waxes and wanes. I cannot sustain uncomplicated, unadulterated cheer throughout the holidays, and I spend much of this season feeling down about things that cannot be changed or fixed.

But I did love Christmas once.

Apart from summer (and its three months of freedom when school was out), the holiday season used to be my favorite time of year. Of course, back in those childhood days, from the 1980s into the 1990s, I would have insisted on calling it the Christmas season. After all, you can hardly expect an American evangelical family to proclaim joy to the world and peace on earth without throwing a healthy dose of majoritarian grievance into the mix.

There was always the occasional angry reminder that we were going on Christmas break, not winter break, reinforced explicitly by the Christian school my sister and I attended, where Mom was a teacher. And our tree was adorned not only with the typical homey hodgepodge of classic, kitschy, and homemade decorations, but also with specifically evangelical kitsch.

I’m not just talking about lightweight slogans like “Jesus is the reason for the season.” You see, the really spiritual Christians go way beyond that with, for example, ornaments featuring a nail to remind you that Jesus was only born so he could grow up and die horribly “for our sins,” and candy cane themed ornaments that come with a story about the classic Christmas treat’s (fake) Christian origins and symbolism. Honestly, it would be just as valid to hang a bottle of Newman’s Own Balsamic vinaigrette on your tree and tell everyone the claim on the label – that Balsamic vinegar was christened in honor of two tragic brothers who killed each other in a duel, Balsa and Mic – is true, and also  your sincerely held religious belief, which makes it unassailable. God forbid we simply enjoy a festively striped, red and white crook-shaped peppermint stick without seeing Jesus’s blood in it. I mean, that’s not morbid at all.

Still, these heavy-handed didactic moments did nothing to dissipate the pure, childlike pleasure I once found in a break from routine and in whimsical decorations, delicious holiday food, and special family experiences like Christmas concerts or carriage rides in downtown Indianapolis, or singing around the piano at my grandparents’ house. And let’s not forget the presents!

To make the magic last longer, our stockings went up right after Thanksgiving, and every so often throughout December my sister and I would find that “Santa” had left us a little something early. Santa, aka Mom, still does this for Dad and for me when I do go to Indiana for Christmas, and the last time I was there, I left a few early gifts in my parents’ stockings as a means of showing appreciation for all the effort, planning, and love Mom put into making Christmas special for her kids. Given that husbands still take on less domestic and emotional labor than wives, I suspect that the onus for doing such things falls primarily on mothers in general. In our case, while Dad was very involved with us kids, he was also a music pastor, which meant he had to spend much of December working hard to prepare the Christmas Eve church service.

I didn’t love all my mom’s invented Christmas traditions as much as the early presents, though. The older I got, the more awkward it felt to be expected to write down “what I’m giving to Jesus this year” on a heart-shaped piece of paper, read what I wrote out loud to the family, and place the paper on the manger in our nativity set. And while I will eat just about any sort of cake you put in front of me, actually having to sing “Happy Birthday” to “Jesus” is ridiculous and uncomfortable. After learning of my discomfort, to Mom’s credit, a few years ago she announced that the paper heart ritual was now opt-in; I can thus opt out without making a scene. I also refuse to sing “Happy Birthday,” which gets me a motherly look of disapproval. But I can deal with that, and I’ll still happily chow down on “Jesus’s” cake, because after all he’s not going to eat it.

What I can’t deal with, however, is the idea that it is my moral obligation to make merry with relatives who just voted to take away my rights and the rights of many others, lest I be decried as “divisive” and “political” by both family members and The New York Times, a paper they would never read anyway because it will always be “too liberal,” no matter how many more Ross Douthats and David Frenches it hires as opinion columnists while refusing to hire even one out transgender reporter or columnist.

The expectation to put aside legitimate concerns and divisions in favor of a “good vibes only” attitude is also expected in many workplaces, proclaimed by many a Christian prosperity gospel preacher and New Age guru, and baked into the algorithms dictated by tech bros and relied on by so-called influencers. And just as Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want “politics” on Facebook, the typical white middle- or upper-class American family doesn’t want “politics” at the table on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But politics is always present; it’s just a matter of what politics is given space for expression. There’s nothing apolitical about “Uncle Bob” downing an eggnog or three and beginning to rant and rave about how Black Lives Matter is “a bunch of thugs” while insisting he’s “not racist.” And when only the niece who pushes back gets shouted down and rebuked for being “divisive,” the rest of the family isn’t defending “civility” or “the Christmas spirit.” What the family’s actually defending is white supremacy and the American status quo.

Sometimes, it’s just too much to deal with.  

For many Americans, estranging bigoted family members is the best move they can make for their own wellbeing, and that may mean having to opt out of the big family holiday celebrations. I would argue that this is incidentally the best move for the country as well; nothing good ever comes from coddling bigots. That this separation may be necessary doesn’t mean it isn’t sad, but it is what it is. Family division can be one reason some people find the holidays particularly emotionally draining, but it doesn’t help any of us to be told that with a little Christmas magic or advice from a couples therapist who works on a reality TV show, we can and should just suck it up.

Will American Christmas movies ever be able to deal with such complex, nuanced realities in any serious way? To hold space for those of us who find the holidays hard without insisting that everything has to be neatly tied up with a bow at the end of 90 minutes or so? Probably not. The slogan may say “America runs on Dunkin,” but America really runs on the illusion that deep-seated divisions can just be set aside, that reconciliation is simple and cheap and quick. That wherever there are deep divisions, there are two sides that are equally wrong. That the people who continue to reinforce American patriarchy and white supremacy just need to be empathized with and coddled in order for us to arrive at a place where we can just all get along. It’s these illusions that keep the engines of American capitalism churning, putting out more Christmas kitsch and formulaic Christmas films each and every year.

This piece was edited by Nicole Froio and copy edited by Andrea Grimes