The case against Christmas

A guest post by Titania McGrath.

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, you’re definitely racist.

This entire ‘season of goodwill’ is deeply problematic. Across the world, children are being registered on lists of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and their behaviour rewarded according to the strategic allocation of gifts. They are being indoctrinated into capitalism without even knowing it.

The implication that merit should be any kind of benchmark for reward and achievement is everything that is wrong with modern society. Instead, Christmas gifts should be distributed according to skin colour, sexual orientation and other vectors of oppression.

For instance, a Latinx girl should receive twice as many gifts a white male infant as reparations for the brutalising experience of existing in a systemically racist patriarchal culture. When it comes to white boys, parents should probably just smash up their presents with a mallet.

If you have reproduced, you should be ashamed of yourself. Children are trophies of meat for self-congratulatory heterosexuals. And they are terrible for the environment. You’d be far better off with a peace lily or a spider plant.

But if you must breed, here are some Christmas gifts that are adequately woke: reusable water bottles, Hamas t-shirts, tins of tomato soup (to chuck about in art galleries), pronoun badges, recyclable paper hats, keffiyeh-themed onesies, halal cupcakes laced with puberty blockers, and a papier-mâché bust of Zack Polanski.

Christmas is a form of structural violence. If you need further evidence, consider how families are brainwashed into murdering trees and dressing their corpses in flashing lights. It’s this kind of grotesque ecological vandalism that first radicalised Greta Thunberg.

Besides, scientists have proven that families are deeply damaging to our mental health, encouraging generational rivalry, manipulative mind-games, and a psychiatric disorder known as ‘love’. There is no more destructive way to live than with parents, siblings and children. It’s called the ‘nuclear family’ for a reason.

And so Christmas simply intensifies an already unhealthy state of affairs, by demanding that we spend excessive periods of time with other human beings simply on the grounds that we have similar DNA. You can’t get much more discriminatory than that.

And let’s not forget that some of the worst crimes take place within the family home. For example, studies have shown that there have been zero recorded cases of incest among people who are unrelated. That cannot be a coincidence.

Father Christmas is, of course, a symbol of patriarchal entitlement. What kind of monster breaks into people’s houses, guzzles their sherry, and expects to be lauded for it? And thanks to Ozempic, these days he’ll find it much easier to descend down the chimney.

Besides, we’ve all watched that video of Father Christmas rolling around in the snow with Mariah Carey. Such repugnant displays of toxic masculinity are completely unacceptable. Not to mention that his catchphrase – ‘ho, ho, ho’ – is profoundly offensive to sex workers.

Santa’s elves are, of course, a form of slave labour. He has evaded criminal prosecution by living in Lapland, a place so desolate that it does not appear on many maps. You would think the Finnish government would do something about this festive terrorist, but I suppose they’re too busy building saunas.

And why can’t Christmas be more LGBTQIA+ friendly? We all know that Santa is in a nongay marriage with Mrs Claus, which makes him a terrible role model. And one of the most popular movies at this time of year is A Christmas Carol based on a book by that notorious heterosexual Charles Dickens.

Watch any version of the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge and you’ll be shocked by the lack of queer and trans representation. Why does the BBC keep showing such fascist-adjacent propaganda on Christmas day? They may as well broadcast Triumph of the Will.

And the ‘nativity’ is the most objectionable of all. Even if we assume the three kings are in a polyamorous relationship, the focus of the scene is squarely on Mary and Joseph, the ultimate icons of heteronormativity. Until the queer community is properly represented at Christmas, they can never be free.

Although I will admit that tinsel is pretty gay.

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