It isn’t just “the season to be girly”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001013.html , but also the one of good will to all men (and women). Which ought to provide ample opportunity for critical reflection on the various stories, lyrics, symbols and so forth that we encounter at Christmas time. I’m sure that many readers have already encountered this “libertarian reading”:http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=4491 of Dickens’s _A Christmas Carol_ (sample quote “Nowhere in the story does Dickens endorse welfare. Rather, he suggests that charity and hard work in the business world are how best to combat poverty.”) There are surely other possibilities. “Good King Wenceslas”:http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~av359/xmas/carols/gkw.html for example, as discussed on a blog’s comments board:
bq. We just aren’t told how the “poor man” came to be living a good league hence (which is a serious omission in a work of this nature). How about some rigorous comparisons with others in the kingdom? And for all we know he was poor because _he chose_ to live near St Agnes Fountain (which was a pretty stupid thing to do). Why was King Wenceslas — who as king should have been safeguarding property rights and looking after national defense — wasting our taxes on flesh, wine and logs for someone whose lifestyle is _no business_ of the state?!
Other suggestions?
{ 19 comments }
dsquared 12.17.03 at 10:53 am
“We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star”
Notice how the whole thing is told from the Arab point of view. Typical.
James Russell 12.17.03 at 11:26 am
I’m sure I’d find this terribly amusing if I didn’t find it so depressing for some reason.
bryan 12.17.03 at 1:48 pm
well I don’t have much liking for libertarianism as practiced, although it’s all very fine in theory (except for the dumb parts), and this guy with the Scrooge libertarian reading is trying to build some liberal strawman arguing for A Christmas Carol supporting welfare so he can knock it all down, so he’s a typical Conservative Think-Tank hack. The questions I have are:
Do you think A Christmas Carol is a cogent argument for Welfare Statism?
Do you think Dickens was trying to make that argument?
I sure do hope the answers are no.
Once one gets past the knocks at Welfare the interpretation seems well within the range of possible interpretations of the story, indeed it is even somewhat of a dull one.
The Wenceslas thing is very funny though.
John Isbell 12.17.03 at 1:59 pm
The Three Kings are my choice too. What were they doing with their heads still on their shoulders?
Inquiring minds want to know.
bryan 12.17.03 at 1:59 pm
“Grandma got run over by a reindeer…”
is a typical example of liberal BushHate, this is something the guy did nearly twenty years ago, he’s already stated he probably wasn’t on anything very illegal, and he said in his speech last Christmas: “Americania are (sic) a beautiful, prosrouspous (sic) country because of our lots of Grandmas” which I think is a pretty damn moving apology.
(sorry had to just take that song, as your various stories, lyrics, symbols and so forth was just sort of funny )
dsquared 12.17.03 at 2:22 pm
The Ur-text for all of these is of course, Margaret Thatcher’s gloss on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Nick 12.17.03 at 3:20 pm
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open sleigh…
Typical enviro-wacko propaganda here – Note that no alternatives to travelling on the sleigh are considered (and who’s going to pick up all that horse manure afterwards, eh? I don’t see many longhairs volunteering for that duty!) and as for it being ‘fun’ the enviro-wackos are clearly trying to make children think that sitting in not just any sleigh, but an open sleigh (probably to commune with the atmosphere or some such nonsense) is preferable to cruising through the streets in a warm, comfortable SUV.
And of course, the mentions to snow clearly prove that none of them really believe in global warming, or are trying to get all our kids to take cocaine, depending on who’s funding this research.
(for the avoidance of doubt, these are not my real views)
Invisible Adjunct 12.17.03 at 4:34 pm
Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
“Deck the Halls” is quite clearly an attack on the righteous and the godly: a manifest expression of the homosexual agenda which seeks to make over the wardrobes, grooming habits and decorating styles of straight guys living in Park Slope and the East Village.
Andrew Edwards 12.17.03 at 4:35 pm
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer / had a very shiny nose / and if you ever saw it / you would even say it glows / all of the other reindeer / used to laugh and call him names / they never let poor Rudoplh / join in any reindeer games. / Then one foggy Xmas eve / Santa came to say, / “Rudoplh with your nose so bright, / won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?” / Then how the reindeer loved him / as they shouted out with glee / “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, / You’ll go down in history!”
Now the left is encouraging affirmative action not just for its favourite minorities and special interests, but even for alchoholics?
Three key overtones surround this insiduous piece of letist propaganda:
1) Rudolph, by dint of his “difference” – and the “histoical slight” of not playing reindeer games – is entitled to special treatment – not only guiding the sleigh, but even ‘going down in history’. Typically, the left expects even to re-write history to make it suit their political aims.
2) Alchoholism, surely the most common cause of a “red nose” is endorsed and even attached to celebration. Just another example of the left’s insistence on ‘moral equivalence’, which is actually ‘promotion of immorality’. They bring an obviously immoral act and elevate it to an heroic stature. Do these liberals have any interest in judging what’s right?
3) Distortion of traditional values. As we all know, the Santa of tradition had no ‘red-nosed reindeer’. He had eight, all of whose names we know (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen). Who is this ‘Rudolph’? An imposter? No, sadly not. He is a product of a deliberate effort to re-write tradition in such a way as that it suits not the values of our forefathers, but an explicit liberal corruption of those values.
And they sing this to children. To children! Disgusting.
dsquared 12.17.03 at 5:15 pm
“Oh come all ye faithful”
Hello? Separation of Church and State? Anybody? Jeez.
Grand Moff Texan 12.17.03 at 7:14 pm
And now, for your listening pleasure, the Objectivist Monophony will perform “The Four Sights that changed Siddhartha’s life,” in self-centered asshole major.
anon 12.17.03 at 8:35 pm
Now the left is encouraging affirmative action not just for its favourite minorities and special interests, but even for alchoholics?
Typical conservative jumping to conclusions with insufficient data. The fact that Rudolph suffered from rosacea does not mean he was an alcoholic.
scott h. 12.17.03 at 8:48 pm
What about The Grinch Who Violated the Property Rights of the Whos? Or A Christmas Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Purchase a Gun?
(I would’ve titled the post “We Fisk You a Merry X-mas”, but that’s just me.)
Katie 12.17.03 at 9:24 pm
How about the cruel taxation policies (“Our finest gifts we bring/Ba rum pum pum pum/To lay before the king/Ba rum pum pum pum rum pum pum pum rum pum pum pum”) endorsed in The Little Drummer Boy? *Even children* were forced to pay tribute. And finally, The Little Drummer Boy plays his drum for the king, exulting statist control even over the production of art. Disgusting. (It’s hardly surprising that the Drummer Boy is poor in such an economy. Perhaps after having successfully curried the favor of the unnamed “they” who escort him to the baby Jesus, he will eventually get a cushy bureaucratic position as a state government employee or the administrator in a teacher’s union, and go on to oppress another generation of Bethlehemians.) The ox and lamb, symbolizing nature, are said to “keep time,” as if nature would be in sympathy with such a display, and perhaps it is unintentionally apt that the timekeepers are dumb servile beasts of burden. Of course, such policies are directly contrary to man’s best nature, which can only be fully expressed if afforded the liberty it is due.
Kieran Healy 12.17.03 at 10:14 pm
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.
I think Bjorn Lomborg decisively refuted that environmentalist canard.
Katherine 12.17.03 at 10:19 pm
On the third day of Christmas
my true love gave to me . . .
three Freedom hens
two turtle-objectively-pro-Saddamites
and a partridge in a forest fire hazard.
Katherine 12.17.03 at 11:01 pm
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he’s Parson Brown
He’ll say: Are you married?
We’ll say: No man,
But you can do the job
When you’re in town.
Will Massachusetts’ unelected, activist judiciary stop at nothing?
Nabakov 12.18.03 at 4:39 am
“All I want for Christmas are my two front teeth”
Free dental care! It’s the thin end of the Socialized Health Care wedge…which will inevitably lead to the breakdown of the family unit…
“I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus underneath
the mistletoe last night.”
Nabakov 12.18.03 at 7:09 am
Apparently the true cost of the 12 Days of Christmas – that is the 364 items listed in the carol – is $65,264 in 2003, up from 2002’s true cost of $54,951. This increase of nearly 19 percent shatters the previous record increase of 8.4 percent that was achieved in 1987.
More at http://www.pncbank.com/12days/
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