I mention this for two reasons. One is that today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which is the historical moment that brought the US into the war. I also mention it because we are approaching Christmas season and the War on Christmas is presumably in full swing right now.

Let me be clear on this: The”War on Christmas” is a falsehood. It is a construct of the right wing, in particular, promoted by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. It is a way that certain political factions (mainly these days known as teabaggers) can play the victim when others suggest that we respect the United States Constitution by keeping religious observance out of public institutions. One of the great sub-falsehoods of the War on Christmas is that saying something like “Happy Holidays” is an affront of some sort. That is certainly not how I remember it. When I was a kid, I learned that “Happy Holidays” was a convenient way of shortening “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” Later, I learned that Happy Holidays was a convenient way of including Hanuka, which was celebrated by lots of people in my New Yorkish social circle, and eventually, my in laws. But now, Bill O’Reilly is telling us that “Happy Holidays” is a political statement meant to annoy Christians.

Well Bill, it isn’t. But if I somehow annoy you by accident, I’ll take that as a freebie.

But that is actually a digression. The point I want to make is more specific. Part of the argument that Christmas should be insinuated into the activities of public institutions, such as public schools, is that Christmas is really a “cultural phenomenon” and we are pretty much a “Christian Culture” anyway. I have even heard it said that “Christianity is the dominant culture” … so we should just accept that and participate in it …. it’s not a religious thing, its a cultural thing.

Well, to some extent that’s true, but I must say that I cringe when I hear a term like “Dominant Culture.” Dominant? In that if I have a difference with a member of the Dominant Christian Culture over something, that I have to back off and just go along because I’m subdominiant? Meaning that when various factions come to the table over some important issue, the Christians get more votes? Meaning that the fact that Christmas is already everywhere all the time since before Thanksgiving every year that we have to find places that are relatively Christmas free, like public school classrooms, and smear it all over the walls and ceilings there too?

The parents of my generation suffered through that great war, the one that involved the attack on Pearl Harbor, because two groups of people decided that they were the Dominant Culture. I don’t mean to Godwin the War on Christmas or anything, but really, isn’t the current ubiquity of Christmas enough? Isn’t it enough that when Julia and I went to Macy’s the other day to get a Hanuka present, and asked the people who worked in the “Holiday” gift section where the Hanuka stuff was, we were met with either blank stares or twisted smirks, but no indication as to where the Hanuka stuff was (which, apparently, wasn’t)? Does it not matter that a Facebook friend of mine has a friend who actually thinks that “Happy Hanuka” is Yiddish for “Merry Christmas”? Does it not matter that it is considered normal to pipe religious songs that are only viewed as valid by part of our society into every non-governmental public space in the country, including out on the street? Is it not enough that Christmas, a religious day of observance, is a federally recognized holiday? Is it not enough that it is considered routine to spend taxpayers’ dollars on erecting giant dead trees with large carbon footprints owing to the lights in the public town squares? Is it not enough that those green and red sweaters with the reindeer and snow flakes actually exit in real life and not just in movies like Bridget Jones Diary?

As we remember Pearl Harbor and World War II, let’s also recognize that when enough time passes since the horrors of one or another “Dominant Culture” coming to power, it is easier for it to happen again. There are people, forces, groups, organizations that want to dominate this culture, racially, religiously, value-wise, or in some other way. Christmas season, culturally speaking, is often a time of hope. This year, let’s hope that our fellow citizens increasingly recognize the dangers this presents, and shun those individuals and organizations.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Fight!

Since this is a repost I’m including a screen shot of the earlier comments:

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

The ever-repeating chant that was once barely audible, then louder, then deafening, is now pounding terribly in my ears and once again, I scream, but it is once again a silent scream and the cotton cloth that covers me once again grows heavy and pins me down.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum … RUM PUM

Finally, the creature’s hands come down around my neck and take hold, it’s head, faceless, now pressed against mine and I think it may be growling, but since it has finally grabbed me, and only now, because those are the rules in this particular nightmare, my scream of terror can break loose so it does breaks loose and I cry out …

THE RUM PUMS ARE HERE … THE RUM PUMS ARE GOING TO GET ME!!!!

And I sit up with a start, drenched in the sweat of night terror, panting heavily, and I can hear adults heading for my room in response to my horrific screams and uncontrolled sobbing.

DAMN YOU BING CROSBY!!!

It took years for me to figure it out. Every year at Christmas time, there were all these things we would do. We would:

• Make Christmas tree ornaments
• Go out in the woods and cut down a tree, bring it home
• Set up the train set under the tree
• Hang Santa’s boots inside the fake fire place as though he was stuck up there
• Watch as dad hangs precariously off the side of the ladder, perched on grandma’s porch’s roof (she lived upstairs) as he attaches the Life Size Santa, Sled and Reindeer ornament to the gable of the house
• Wrap the extra fruit cakes to have handy in case an unexpected or forgotten guest shows up
• Go to the Spencer Gift Store at the newly constructed mall with 12 dollars to buy one present for each person who would be coming for Christmas
• Listen to Christmas Music
• Have nightmares, several nightmares about the Rum Pums.

And in there, in that list, was a link I never understood until I was much older and thought back on it all. Only then did I understand the origin of the Rum Pums which haunted me at any time of the year they felt so moved, but always, and especially, around Christmas. I would hear them in the distance and I’d move away.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

But they always knew which way to turn to come closer, ever closer. I’d use every trick I knew, climbing over Mr. Wilson’s garage, using the alley way behind the diner, ducking into the side entrance of the apartment building, even hiding in the forbidden furnace room with the hand drawn sign on the huge metal fire door that said “Stay Out This Means You” on it.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

I’d crawl through the secret flap in the fence beneath the grape vines, climb over the maple in the corner and drop into Billy’s yard, crawl through the secret flap in his fence, work my way across the street and down the other ally behind Ye Olde Tavern which we were always told to stay away from, back around the corner and into the basement where that guy died that one time, and eventually under the hedge in Mr. Distoll’s yard even risking the thorns on the rose bushes he surrounded his property with to keep the kids off his perfect lawn.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

But no matter what tricks I used, the Rum Pums would grow steadily nearer, adjusting their course even from blocks away (I could see them doing this in my mind’s eye) as I made changes in my path that they could not possibly have seen or predicted. And the distance would close no matter how steady and plodding their pace, and no matter how swift my terror-driven stumbling run.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

The last place I would always run would be the upstairs bedroom, the bedroom in my Grandmother’s flat, where I only rarely ever slept but always had nightmares. Somehow I knew that the Rum Pums were the body of my dead Grandfather, the body that was laid out in the living room only a few feet from this bedroom, the body that I was brought to as a toddler, and shown, Irish style, during the wake.

“That’s your grandfather. Kiss Papa good bye.”

I said “Light … Light … Light ….” as a two year old does, pointing to each candle set around his corpse. Then, looking at Grandpa’s lifeless form, “Shhhhh… Papa’s sleeping”

But now his lifeless body is not sleeping. His lifeless body is relentlessly hunting me down.

rum pum … rum pum … rum pum …

It is reanimated, faceless, clothing-less yet not naked, possessed, moving ever closer to me, and as always I am in what was once his bedroom hiding under the covers in what was once his bed, and the door opens and the Rum Pum is there, and it closes in, and it takes me by the neck and once again, my scream becomes audible only because the terror pushes me into a wakeful state.

The Nightmare That Was Christmas is ever present just below the surface. And not just for me, but for you as well, my friend.

Observe, listen. Listen through to the end to understand:

Yes, the stuff of nightmares.

Perhaps if my family had this version instead, my nightmares would not have been as bad:

I don’t know. That’s kinda nightmarish but in a totally different way. No, I think there’s only one Christmas Drumming Song that I can listen to right now to wipe out the nightmares.

Whole different kind of sitting up in bed in a sweat.

Finally, having said all that, I do recognize the importance of tradition. And thus, the new tradition in our household:

What horrors have I wrought do you suppose, little one? What horrors!?!?

Actually, he’s wrong in comparing his ability, or yours or mine, to trace back a genealogy with Luke and his buddies. Back in those days, and in that culture, people did indeed walk around with pretty deep genealogies attached to them (though the extensive and intensive study of genealogies in anthropology tells us that those genealogies are not expected to be accurate).

(Sorry, I meant for this to come out yesterday but forget to hit the “publish” button)

I mention this for two reasons. One is that today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which is the historical moment that brought the US into the war. I also mention it because we are approaching Christmas season and the War on Christmas is presumably in full swing right now.

Let me be clear on this: The “War on Christmas” is a falsehood. It is a construct of the right wing, in particular, promoted by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. It is a way that certain political factions (mainly these days known as teabaggers) can play the victim when others suggest that we respect the United States Constitution by keeping religious observance out of public institutions. One of the great sub-falsehoods of the War on Christmas is that saying something like “Happy Holidays” is an affront of some sort. That is certainly not how I remember it. When I was a kid, I learned that “Happy Holidays” was a convenient way of shortening “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” Later, I learned that Happy Holidays was a convenient way of including Hanuka, which was celebrated by lots of people in my New Yorkish social circle, and eventually, my in laws. But now, Bill O’Reilly is telling us that “Happy Holidays” is a political statement meant to annoy Christians.

Well Bill, it isn’t. But if I somehow annoy you by accident, I’ll take that as a freebie.

But that is actually a digression. The point I want to make is more specific. Part of the argument that Christmas should be insinuated into the activities of public institutions, such as public schools, is that Christmas is really a “cultural phenomenon” and we are pretty much a “Christian Culture” anyway. I have even heard it said that “Christianity is the dominant culture” … so we should just accept that and participate in it …. it’s not a religious thing, its a cultural thing.

Well, to some extent that’s true, but I must say that I cringe when I hear a term like “Dominant Culture.” Dominant? In that if I have a difference with a member of the Dominant Christian Culture over something, that I have to back off and just go along because I’m subdominiant? Meaning that when various factions come to the table over some important issue, the Christians get more votes? Meaning that the fact that Christmas is already everywhere all the time since before Thanksgiving every year that we have to find places that are relatively Christmas free, like public school classrooms, and smear it all over the walls and ceilings there too?

The parents of my generation suffered through that great war, the one that involved the attack on Pearl Harbor, because two groups of people decided that they were the Dominant Culture. I don’t mean to Godwin the War on Christmas or anything, but really, isn’t the current ubiquity of Christmas enough? Isn’t it enough that when Julia and I went to Macy’s the other day to get a Hanuka present, and asked the people who worked in the “Holiday” gift section where the Hanuka stuff was, we were met with either blank stares or twisted smirks, but no indication as to where the Hanuka stuff was (which, apparently, wasn’t)? Does it not matter that a Facebook friend of mine has a friend who actually thinks that “Happy Hanuka” is Yiddish for “Merry Christmas”? Does it not matter that it is considered normal to pipe religious songs that are only viewed as valid by part of our society into every non-governmental public space in the country, including out on the street? Is it not enough that Christmas, a religious day of observance, is a federally recognized holiday? Is it not enough that it is considered routine to spend taxpayers’ dollars on erecting giant dead trees with large carbon footprints owing to the lights in the public town squares? Is it not enough that those green and red sweaters with the reindeer and snow flakes actually exit in real life and not just in movies like Bridget Jones Diary?

As we remember Pearl Harbor and World War II, let’s also recognize that when enough time passes since the horrors of one or another “Dominant Culture” coming to power, it is easier for it to happen again. There are people, forces, groups, organizations that want to dominate this culture, racially, religiously, value-wise, or in some other way. Christmas season, culturally speaking, is often a time of hope. This year, let’s hope that our fellow citizens increasingly recognize the dangers this presents, and shun those individuals and organizations.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Fight!