A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion’s nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.
“Spare me!” begged the poor Mouse. “Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you.”
The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. “Mice are garbage. They’re worthless. They bring gang violence and disease to the forest.” Rather than release the Mouse, the Lion paid to have her shipped to another forest where she had never lived before.
The Lion, seeing himself as King of the Jungle, began to conspire to rid the forest of Mice entirely. He spoke of them at length as threats to all animals’ kits and cubs, as criminals bringing drugs into the forest, and that these Mice are eating the cats and eating the dogs. Long tired of the stodginess of the elephant and the empty braying of the donkey, the denizens of the forest flocked to this new kind of ruler.
The forest crumbled quickly under the decisions of the Lion. Rodents who had supported the Lion were aghast that they were being targeted under this regime, believing themselves to be different because they weren’t Mice! Even the larger mammals began to question the state of things as food became more and more scarce as the Lion tore down more and more trees, arguing their necessity to the forest is a derangement induced by the woke mind-virus. Only the Snakes were happy, profiting as they were on the boiling-over disdain for Mice that they had always kept simmering.
Some time later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter’s net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. Looking around, the Lion saw several tiny figures emerge silently out from under the brush.
“You laughed when I said I would repay you,” said the Mouse. “Now you see that even a Mouse can take down a Lion.”
Christmas, as it is popularly understood, is a deeply conservative holiday. It is literally about the birth of the Christian saviour, and there is a declared war against it by woke liberals who wish nothing more than to acknowledge a world outside of baby Jesus and His manger. It is a holiday deeply embedded with tradition, symbolism, and in-group community – big conservative values! For those who know me or have read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know me as an anarchistic atheist who disdains power and hierarchy, whether religious or secular. You would assume that someone with such radical beliefs would be antagonistic toward Christmas and all its consumerist, nativist ideology.
You would be wrong.
It was a revelatory moment when I realized that I was a Christmas conservative. Obviously not in the mainstream sense with either of those two phenomena, given the birth of Christ holds no meaning in my life nor do I believe churches ought to be exempt from taxation. I just like to celebrate the way that I’ve always celebrated. Big family affair, some gifts, a real tree, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, and an immutable canon of movies and songs.
Elf on a Shelf became a thing much later in my life, so I think it’s tacky and creates additional lies that must be maintained on top of an already dubious holiday tradition of Santa Claus and the north pole. They keep making Christmas movies, some of them even fairly well-done, but as much as they might involve the saving of Christmas from a variety of yuletide threats, they will never be truly Christmas to me. People literally mark the beginning of the holiday season with the emergence of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, rising from the rotting leaves of fall to usher in the season of unending retail insanity. I do not consider it a Christmas classic since it did not come out early enough in my life for me to have had it embedded in the core of my Christmas spirit. I’m not so much a Grinch about Christmas as I am a stodgy, old curmudgeon, set in my ways, whinging about the kids these days who know nothing about what Christmas is truly about – how I personally have celebrated it since I was a kid!
The greatest consequence of global warming is she keeps escaping every single time!
I see value in the way that I celebrate Christmas. It’s important to me, and I wouldn’t want to have to change my ways because I see this holiday as sacred, in my own secular way. My community is small and familial, but meaningful. I have my traditions, my important symbols, and my cherished values deeply entwined with this holiday. I’m hopeful to be able to pass down my traditions to my currently hypothetical children. As much as anyone can be a conservative, I am with Christmas.
When I realized that I was a Christmas conservative, it formed within me a hitherto unknown empathy for the right-wing. It’s nice to have nice things. Change isn’t an inherent good. Progress is nuanced, and blasphemy can truly sting in the yearly attacks of a 90s pop-diva. Maybe the values of typical conservatives don’t come from what they abhor; maybe the values of typical conservatives, perhaps, mean a little bit more…
Some say his bipartisanship grew three sizes that day!
I think the biggest difference in a Christmas conservative like myself and a traditional conservative is that modern Christmas is very clearly diluted in its practice and has been embraced by secularism rather broadly. People get upset when stores have “Happy Holidays” in the window, but they’re not putting it up during Ramadan, are they? Much in the same way that everyone acknowledges that this is the year 2025, we celebrate a Christian holiday without too much fretting over the minute details of its religiosity. It is patently obvious to me that my puritanical Christmas beliefs come from my individual upbringing, but less so to regular conservatives that their own values come from the same place. There are as many Christianities as there are Christians; it’s just that no one acknowledges that, so it’s easier to want to impose a false doctrinal unity on everyone else.
I don’t care if you listen to Mariah Carey, during Christmastime or otherwise. You can sneakily move your elf from shelf to shelf, and I’ll keep my opinions about it to myself. We can still be friends if you don’t like Home Alone, though I won’t necessarily trust the movie recommendations you might make in the future. The need to impose is where I break from the broader conservative movement. Other people don’t need to adhere to my lifestyle; that would be silly. Much in the same way a man kissing another man doesn’t infringe on my ability to kiss a woman, nor does someone born a man identifying as a woman impinge on my own lifelong masculinity, I don’t carry the fear and insecurity inherent in typical political conservatism that needs a mono-culture in order to feel safe in their practices. I can only empathize to a point.
How badly does one need to pee in order to be embrace inclusivity?
So this holiday season, celebrate however you like – or don’t at all! I am neither your real nor your hypothetical father!
Are we more than we can recall? Well-recognized is repressed trauma, scars without a cause Pain slipped into the void, yet retained even in its loss Forgotten stories compose our lives, yet not all of them bitter tragedies How much does the empty space on a page produce the shape drawn within it?
What of our dusty childhood dreams, obscured by layers of maturing years? What of enrapturing beauty, uncaptured and so lost to time? What of the spontaneous laughters, the daily smiles, the banal joys of the every day? What of the kindness of a stranger, a day made, one among a sea of endless days? What of you, your name hovering just on the tip of my memory, your face a warm blur? What of this moment, of any moment, charming but unmemorable? When I am old and my mind derelict, my life a collection of forgotten moments, will their shadows linger? How many have forgotten me now, their lives shaped by my own faded contribution? I content myself with my own annihilation, knowing the ripples of my life will be carried forward without me
A toast, then! To what? I’m not sure Its value uncertain; its impact eluding But I am what I am, built on something I don’t all remember
Here’s to our phantom influences, may their silent echoes continue to reverberate, no longer unsung!
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