Deck the halls (with faux “diversity”)

Halloween often ends with party decorations strewn every which way, a slight headache, and the sudden build-up of an overbearing, overbearing, overbearing sense of Christmas. Pumpkins are quickly switched out for fairy lights and wreaths, and a short stroll through any shopping mall sufficiently hammers the point home: it is now the Christmas season.

Pardon me—the Holiday season. Where the people come together and experience the joyous joy of Holiday, all the Holiday, nothing but the pure and honest Holiday.

I acknowledge that this is a step. Whether completely refusing to actually call it “Christmas” in the midst of all the overbearing joy of the Holiday is a step in a direction that genuinely celebrates diversity—rather than a corporate ploy to sell Christmas to non-Christmas-celebrating folk—remains to be said, but it is very much a noticeable step from what came before. Except for the massive tree in the middle of the shopping mall. The endless colour-coded ornamentation every way one looks. Carols, and candy canes, and a veritable deluge of season-appropriate television.

They’ll speak of ”diversity” with a twinkle in their eye that sparkles like the first real snowfall that refuses to show up until mid-January. Truly, everyone can find something to love in Holiday; the sense of exclusion is dead because we deem it dead, and we have consulted amongst ourselves and decided that we have performed an excellent job at making sure every facet of Holiday is properly celebrated by all peoples—particularly those that are Diverse. When we tell all these Diverse people in the street that we hope for their Holiday to be an enjoyable one, we know in our hearts that they know in their hearts that we care about them, and we care about their take on Holiday, and we care about what it means to them, just as they walk past the enormous Santa mural on the wall.

Of course, this is a fairly long-winded way of saying that the Christmas season in itself is alienating to me. In my childhood, it seemed to be the regularly scheduled time every year where something arose that was much bigger than my supposedly odd-smelling lunches that already and very distinctly made me an Other. This became the norm over time, and I grew to live with it; it didn’t hurt to offer an awkward chuckle and mumbled small talk when someone asked Christmas-shopping-related questions. It wasn’t a big deal.

But pretending that just taking the name out of the season will fix that feeling of alienation—and then patting yourselves on the back for it, no less—is absurd. Starbucks-cup-related idiocy aside, advertising and television programming and all sorts of traditions ensure that the theme of Holiday remains rooted in Christmas and Christmas alone, and if your concept of catering to someone like me as well stops at the exclusion of a single word, don’t pretend that what you’re doing is anything significant in terms of celebrating diversity.

Though I must admit I do find the supposed erasure that makes conservatives cry their crocodile tears to be very amusing.