This article is part of The Twelve Days of Doofmas, a daily series of articles on our favorite Christmas films that was released as Bonus Content leading up to Christmas Eve 2019.
The Same Thing Every Year
You are in a department store. It is November 3rd (the year does not matter) and the department stores have undergone a whirlwind metamorphosis in the three days since Halloween. The candy and costumes have been marked down, sold, and packed away, replaced by gear for the oncoming Christmas season. The only remnants of fall that remain are what token tributes Thanksgiving claims, the turkeys, pilgrims, and even a pumpkin or two. The rest of all that precious shelfspace has been replaced, with evergreen and everred, with baubles and wrapping paper and lights and Santas and presents.
“Christmas is such a consumerist holiday,” you say, as if the one you just left, your favorite, is not characterized by the purchasing of clothes that cannot be worn on any other day and the mass over-consumption of a luxury food.
And in the department stores, the Christmas songs start playing. This is by far the worst part you tell yourself. Not because the bells and jingling and Christmas spirit are bad. No, that’s all great, you admit to yourself, reflecting that once you might have rebelled against it if only to be contrarian, but now acknowledge that the spirit of giving and being thankful is a genuinely good thing. The problem is that it’s the same songs every year. You find yourself telling this to your coworkers at your minimum wage job at the university gift shop.
You tell them, “Ughh I hate this song so much, haven’t we heard it three times today already?” To which they nod in a tired way and say “We know. You’ve said that every day for the past month.”
Except they don’t say that, but you think they’re thinking it. You’re certainly thinking it. You continue, following a script you wrote but have never edited, “The problem is that it’s just the same songs every year. I used to love them, but I’ve listened to these songs for a month straight for 20 years in a row. Two months out of the year, really, since they start in November. I get tired of it.”
You’re visiting your partner’s grandparents. It’s your first time meeting them, or maybe your second. They love hallmark movies, and you’re made to watch them, though you seem to be allowed to distract yourself with your phone. You enjoy the first one alright. Then, over the course of the next few days you watch another. And another. Do they do anything else besides watch the news and hallmark movies. They blur together a bit. A woman finds herself in a new situation and meets a man. One of them loves Christmas, and the other does not. They do something in the community in the spirit of Christmas, and fall in love. With Christmas too.
On the fourth movie, you ask your partner’s grandparents if they think that his woman will fall in love with this man and thereby learn the meaning of Christmas. They frown and tell you to get out of their house. You would if only this had never happened before.
While at their place you learn about the War on Christmas, an unending holy struggle. You remind yourself that Jesus wasn’t even born in wintertime. You say, again, “Haven’t I heard this before?” You wonder if the conflict continues in the other month or if the belligerents sign a yearly armistice.
On the flight back you watch a movie you probably should have seen in theaters. There’s a song with a tune like a Christmas song. Before you can stop yourself it’s in your head, repeating a three second refrain. Not even the words, just the tune. You enlighten your seatmate on your perspective regarding Christmas songs. They’re great, but you’ve heard them on repeat for a whole month for 20 years. Two months a year, counting November. But your seatmate is asleep. They’re watching a Hallmark movie. Don’t they realize they’re all the same?
At home, you read an article about how the new Christmas horror movie is bad and unoriginal. You have an argument with a friend about how you’re not a grinch, you’re just tired of hearing the same thing constantly for a whole month for 20 years, except it’s actually two—
As part of a family tradition, you all watch a Christmas movie together. You all watch the same movie together every year. You must have seen this movie, thirty, fifty times by now? Last year, or maybe it was the year before that, you had to excuse yourself from the viewing, creating much upset in the family. You just couldn’t take hearing the same words again. The words twisting on your lips to match the dialogue felt too much like vomiting. It’s a good movie, you just—
It’s your first Christmas that you’ve had any consciousness for. Christmas existed before then, of course, but you were just an animal back then, a flesh body guided on a track by biological and social imperatives. This year you made someone a gift, and you want them to like it. You made it yourself and picked out the card it’s in.
You give it to them, expectantly. It’s just a drawing, but you tried really hard. You put it in a card that, when you open it, plays a Christmas song with its tinny little speakers. It’s very catchy.
Normally, you think, this someone doesn’t like Christmas all that much. But they like your present a lot. They keep opening and closing the card, to hear it again, and see what you wrote, in your scrawled handwriting. Something about how you love them and hope that Christmas with them “lasts forever and ever.”
On the Christmasses to come, they’ll open that card again. Every year. On your 20th Christmas, you wrinkle your nose and resist the urge to tell them to put it away. You’ve heard that song too many times.
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While Alexandra’s reviews of Christmas movies, songs, and symbolism are fair, they are unoriginal. Alex seems to repeat themself not only across individual reviews but across entire different genres of entertainment. I give Alexandra’s criticism of Christmas content a 6 out of 10.
