Gruffy Pups and Christmas Fronds

Social media is not really my thing. I do have a Twitter account and you can follow me if you want, but I cannot imagine why you would.  I very rarely post pictures, either, mostly because I don’t own a smart phone and it would just take more steps than I could really justify.  My food is not that photogenic.

Occasionally, though, I do use Facebook to link to my blog or to share some inane commentary on some inane topic like the new Star Wars movie.  Also—and I’m a little embarrassed to admit this—I did recently chime in on the whole “Christmas” debate we’ve been having for the last half decade.  I could summarize it for you, but I think our best option is to just copy and paste it and show it to you verbatim.  After all, I still have gifts to wrap.

“Calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree does not offend me.  I have a mortgage, two little kids and a pregnant wife.  I have actual real life-type stuff to occupy my mental energy.  However, calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree does not make you sound suave or progressive.  It makes me think that maybe you just kind of climbed off the spaceship and no one has really filled you in on stuff. 

A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree.  It just is.  That’s its name.  Calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree so as to not offend people is kind of like saying we’re going to start calling bulldogs ‘gruffy pups’ or something equally as dumb.  ‘Oh, you know, in much of America, when people hear the word “bull” they think of an animal that spends a good chunk of its time making love with all the girl cows, and, well, we just don’t want to offend anyone who might think that’s too weird, so let’s rename it something less likely to make people think of cow sex.’  No.  That’s dumb.  A bull dog is a bull dog.  That is the name it has. 

You can call a Christmas tree whatever you want.  You can call it a magic glow bush and I won’t lose sleep over it, but please don’t imagine you are making the world a better place by basically wiping your armpit with the English language. 

However, please feel free to wish me happy holidays.  Do it.  That’s awesome.  I will smile and probably wish you something equally as cheerful back and we’ll both be better off for the very reasonable and civil exchange we had as part of our pluralistic society.  Cool.  But calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree?  I will just smirk and give you the same look I give my kids when they try to convince me orange Skittles is a fruit.”

Now, objectively, that is hilarious.  If I was a humor writer I would totally put that in a column.  Much more importantly, however, others thought it was kind of funny, too.   I think it earned fifty or so “Likes.”  It also garnered a pretty detailed, albeit good-natured, comment from one of my wife’s cousins. 

He is a math professor, and, thus, by default, an arch nemesis.

As an important side note, people who teach the humanities, like history and English, are in a constant and mostly pretend struggle against those who teach the “hard” subjects, such as math and science. Our rivalry very much parallels the grudge between super hero teams like the Avengers and the X-Men.  Officially we are on the same side in a cosmic battle against ignorance.  Unfortunately, we often end up using our tremendous abilities to punch each other through skyscrapers in an effort to boost ratings.

My wife’s cousin did not use his sinister math powers in his Facebook commentary, however.  He instead used a deft combination of history and linguistic evolution, which is kind of like injuring Captain America with his own shield:  I should have seen it coming. (Yeah, I guess I’m saying the humanities are the Avengers in this dumb analogy.  Sorry if that offends.)   

To summarize, he basically pointed out that calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree would have been almost sacrilegious a mere 300 years ago.  After all, putting trees in our home and decorating them is very much a holdover from a more pagan era. 

His point was well taken and very valid.  Language absolutely does change, and we would all probably be better off focusing more of our energy on things like our relationships with real people we really know instead of getting worked up about vast impersonal trends over which we have little control.

However, what still bugs me about the whole “holiday tree” thing is not so much the semantics itself as the strategy.  Political correctness attempts to change language from the top down.  Those with influence basically use that influence to modify the language, fully aware that through language we make meaning, and thus behavior. 

I am a big proponent of civility, but modifying language in this way is terribly insincere. In a democracy language should change organically.  It should change from the bottom up, by its roots.

You know, like a Christmas frond or something.