All I want for Christmas is some peace and quiet on the political correctness front.
Congratulations, Canada! You may have grown up.
I put in that qualifier “may” because there are still a week until Christmas, and something offensive could erupt between now and then. But really, there seems to be a new maturity in the air this Christmas season, and it’s quite possible that Canada finally has matured and learned to live with itself.
No complaints about Christmas trees, nativity scenes or what have you, filed on behalf of minorities like me who hadn’t thought to be offended by such things until mainstream others decided that we were.
By the way, the reason we religious minorities don’t take offence is simple: We’re happy with who we are and we have no reason to be offended.
No controversy over Merry Christmas versus Season’s Greetings versus Happy Holidays. No protests that Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer promotes elder abuse. No objections to Santa being fat (promoting obesity) or bearded (offending people who can’t grow beards).
No arguments that the giant trees strung with lights outside city halls, provincial legislatures or other public buildings are not really Christmas trees, but rather are holiday trees, seasonal spruces or whatever.
Of course, there was a bit of a to-do in early November when Shoppers Drug Mart had to stop playing Christmas music in its stores because people complained that the day after Halloween was too early for this sort of thing. But that’s OK, because when you start playing Christmas music before you’ve even had Remembrance Day, you risk becoming a little pa-rum-pa-pa-pum numb by the time December rolls around.
So, it’s been mercifully quiet overall as far as people taking offence to this, that or the other thing. We seem to have avoided all those jingle hells this year.
Well, except for Pamela McColl, who busied herself rewriting Clement Moore’s poem, ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, to eradicate all mention of Santa smoking a pipe. The cover of her book states the poem was “Edited by Santa Claus for the benefit of children of the 21st century.”
So, that’s what Santa is doing in July when nobody’s giving him much thought! He’s editing children’s books.
McColl told the Associated Press that she’s encountered kids who fret about Santa’s health. Who are these kids who are inebriated from drinking too many cups of politically correct Kool-Aid? They need help.
McColl said: “[Santa] is a real person coming down the chimney and he’s smoking. That’s what a three-year-old thinks like.” Really? I thought a three-year-old thinks like this: “Toys!”
The back of the book’s jacket states that Santa has renounced smoking, along with his other filthy declasse habit of wearing fur — his switch to faux fur is even vouched for by his reindeer. I did notice that the cover of the book features a reindeer with a definitely red nose, hitched to Santa’s sleigh. I’m surprised Rudolph wasn’t also expurgated from the text, since he could be promoting alcoholism with that red nose of his. Rudolph’s antlers should have been erased, too, and his name changed to Ruby so that children get the message that a girl reindeer is just as capable of pulling Santa’s sleigh as a boy reindeer.
Maybe a Christmas carol could be renamed to honour McColl’s efforts: Deck the halls with balls of folly.
Yes, McColl is Canadian, but the rest of us Canadians aren’t behaving as badly (I hope). Instead, it appears that Christmas is being embraced this year without a whimper. The federal Conservatives declared the other day that civil servants are free to decorate their offices with Santa Clauses, holly, wreaths, tinsel or whatever they like. Treasury Board President Tony Clement says this goes for celebrants not just of Christmas, but of Hanukkah, too.
“I see nothing wrong in the workplace at this time of the year … to have the tinsel or the Christmas cards or even a little mini nativity scene or a menorah,” Clement told the Canadian Press.
Thank you, Tony, but we Jews don’t normally bring menorahs to work and set them on our desks.
So, do you think it’s too much to ask that we can keep this up, that no kerfuffle will be kicked up, that nobody will declare that minorities who aren’t offended, actually are offended — right through to Dec. 25?
All I want for Christmas is some peace and quiet on the political correctness front.
