Christmas Unwrapped
Just in time for Christmas is my mini-review of Christmas Unwrapped. In order to tell the verifiable story of the history of Christmas, you have to reveal ‘unflattering’ details about pre-Hollywood Europe. The people who actually live in Europe should not find many problems with this—but, when you are trying to fill the Disney-white pews with colored folk here in the New World, you should have a serious problem with these truths. This may explain why, in part, this History Channel DVD is of such poor quality and enjoys little or no promotion (okay: over 14,000 Google hits is not ‘no promotion’). My mini-review will cover the following points:
- Christmas comes from Yule. I read somewhere like an unprofessional journalist that the largest European ethnic group in the United States is of Germanic peoples—Eisenhower stock. Yule adds the meats and merriment to the holiday—and the worship of the evergreen tree.
- Christmas comes from Charles Dickens, his book A Christmas Carol. The opinion here that it is an error to underestimate how this fictional book shaped the Christmas consciousness. It’s funny how kids of all ages think that works of pure fiction have no effect on the real lives of people. You sucker.
- The cultural origin of Christmas in England is eerily similar to what is behind Mardi gras. What is behind social events like these is the class struggle: for one or more days a year, slave plays master and master plays slave. And during this play, debauchery on a mass scale ensues. This explains why the original Puritans and Protestants did not celebrate anything on December 25. The non-Catholic “Founding Fathers” of the United States of America did not take any days off during Christmas and this effect stayed with their successors for over 60 years!The documentary failed to mention that of the Yule traditions, dead animals and even human slaves were hung from “sacred” trees. Of course it is silly of you to immediately relate this ancient tradition to modern North American lynchings. But it provides silly me with some semblance of an explanation for the presence of entire white families—including children—at too many of these lynchings.