{"id":653,"date":"2005-12-16T23:20:33","date_gmt":"2005-12-17T04:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=653"},"modified":"2005-12-16T23:20:33","modified_gmt":"2005-12-17T04:20:33","slug":"on-a-murderous-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"On a Murderous Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my employees, Natalie, brought this to my attention.<\/p>\n

Joel Krupnik’s home Christmas display consists of a blood-splattered Santa Claus holding a decapitated head<\/a>. The meaning of this display? To quote: [H]is family thought it would be a fun way to make a comment about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.”<\/p>\n

Ooo-kay<\/i>. I’ve seen weird in my time, but this surely takes the cake.<\/p>\n

We live in a world where right-wing pundits are proclaiming a “War on Christmas,” the end of the holiday’s celebration, and the subjugation of Christianity. Never mind the fact that Christians are the overwhelming majority in the United States. Never mind the inability of anyone with a half-functioning brain to miss<\/i> the fact that Christmas is, oh, right around the corner. Never mind the fact that in saying the word “Christmas” a person is naming the reason<\/i> why Christmas is called<\/i> Christmas–“Christ’s Mass,” basically. And something like a display of a homicidal Santa Claus is supposed to help<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Is Christmas commercialized? Sure. I doubt, though, that today society could remove the commercial aspect of Christmas from the holiday season even if the government stepped in and said, “Businesses, thou shalt not hold holiday sales or take Christmas’ name in vain.” It’s simply not<\/i> going to happen. Christmas will always<\/i> overshadow the other December holidays–Festivus, Hannukah, Kwanzaa. Saying “Happy Holidays” to be inclusive or patronizing a business’s December sales isn’t going to deprive Christmas of anything<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If Christmas needs to be saved from anything, it needs to be saved from the people who think Christmas needs saving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my employees, Natalie, brought this to my attention. Joel Krupnik’s home Christmas display consists of a blood-splattered Santa Claus holding a decapitated head. The meaning of this display? To quote: [H]is family thought it would be a fun way to make a comment about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.” Ooo-kay. I’ve seenContinue reading “On a Murderous Santa”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[64,509],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-christmas","tag-santa-claus","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}