Culture Shock 12.25.14: The accidental Christmas song

The hills are alive with the sound of Christmas.

"My Favorite Things" originated in 1959 as part of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music." By the time the film version of "The Sound of Music" premiered six years later, the song was well on its way to becoming a Christmas standard.

The funny thing is, "My Favorite Things" isn't really a Christmas song.

Yes, the song uses lots of wintertime imagery, such as sleigh bells and snowflakes. It also invokes ponies, kittens and bees. No matter how you look at it, "My Favorite Things" doesn't have anything to do with Christmas. Nor, for that matter, does it have anything to do with Hanukkah, the solstice or Kwanzaa. It has no part in a Festivus for the rest of us.

To this day, the best version of "My Favorite Things" remains the 13-minute tour de force of modal jazz improvisation that John Coltrane released in 1961. No one mistakes it for a Christmas song.

None of that, however, has kept other versions out of the annual Christmas rotation.

It's not unlike how "Die Hard" has become a Christmas movie, even though the only part of the plot that's Christmas related is the office Christmas party. A good screenwriter could easily come up with a plausible substitute, and a bad screenwriter could come up with a dozen implausible ones.

For the why of it all, I turned to Wikipedia, which as everyone knows is a wholly reliable source of information and not just a convenient way to settle bar bets.

There I learned Julie Andrews performed "My Favorite Things" during the 1961 Christmas episode of "The Garry Moore Show," a variety program today best remembered for helping give Carol Burnett her start in television. Evidently, "The Garry Moore Show" also gave "My Favorite Things" its start as a Christmas song.

Soon afterward, the song began appearing on Christmas albums, and it has been doing so ever since. The earliest example Wikipedia cites is 1964's "The Jack Jones Christmas Album," where it is performed by "Love Boat Theme" crooner Jack Jones.

A year later, it was everywhere, and by "everywhere" I mean it appeared on a Diana Ross and the Supremes album titled "Merry Christmas," an Andy Williams album titled "Merry Christmas," and an Eddie Fisher album titled, for a change of pace, "Mary Christmas."

So, when it comes to stamping the label "Christmas music" on "My Favorite Things," there is a lot of credit — or blame, depending on your point of view — to go around. Like Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, I put most of the blame for everything bad on Eddie Fisher.

He was a real piece of work.

Not that "My Favorite Things" is a bad Christmas song, despite its not being a Christmas song at all. There certainly are worse Christmas songs, most of which get a lot more airplay.

Despite their best efforts, not even the unlikely pair of Bing Crosby and David Bowie can do much with the soul-crushing monotony of "The Little Drummer Boy." And when it comes to maddening repetition, it's hard to top José Feliciano's novelty hit "Feliz Navidad."

Still, neither of those songs is the worst. When it comes to bad Christmas songs, ex-Beatles are experts. No one could turn noble sentiments into saccharine sentimentality faster than John Lennon during his Plastic Ono Band phase, and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is Exhibit A, co-produced by convicted murder Phil Spector, who currently is serving 19 to life. But worse still is Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," which isn't so much a song as it is the sound of joy dying.

Yet even John and Paul can't top the sheer awfulness and condescension of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure's patronizing famine-relief fundraiser "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

The answer, Bob, is "yes." People in Africa might be starving, but they're not stupid. They know when it's Christmas. I suspect some even know when it's Boxing Day.

Compared to all that rot, "My Favorite Things" isn't bad at all, even if it's a Christmas song that's not really a Christmas song.

Culture Shock 12.22.11: When you wish upon a Wish Book

There it is was, on page 442. Seven and a half feet long, and the Holy Grail of G.I. Joe toys — the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier.

At a retail price of $109.99 — in 1985 dollars — you had to be a very good boy indeed for Santa to leave that under your Christmas tree.

I was never that good, but that's why they called it the "Wish Book," wasn't it?

Before the Internet killed the catalog business, you knew the Christmas shopping season had begun when the Sears Wish Book arrived in your mailbox. There were other catalogs — the J.C. Penny catalog wasn't bad — but none had the allure of the Wish Book. Whether you were a boy or a girl, it had just what you were looking for, whether or not you knew you were looking for it.

That's my idea of an "old-fashioned Christmas."

From remote-controlled airplanes and Teddy Ruxpin storytelling bears to Cabbage Patch Kids and the Atari 2600, the Wish Book was an illustrated guidebook to Christmas bliss.

You leafed through its slick, glossy pages — past the clothes and furniture, bedroom linens and other boring, adult things — and you stared in wonder, not just at the fancy, high-end toys that you suspected might be outside of Santa's price range, but at the elaborate displays of toys in action.

A two-page layout of "Star Wars" action figures might feature dozens of Stormtrooper action figures. Now that was more like it! Not just the one or two Stormtrooper figures you had, but an entire legion!

That was what you needed if you were serious about recreating scenes from the movies.

Just think: It was someone's job to put together those Wish Book photo shoots. Now that must have been a dream job.

The Internet has changed all that. Sears closed its catalog business in the early 1990s.

Nevermore a Wish Book. But while the Internet is great for ordering things, no website has yet come up with a browsing experience that equals sitting down with a fat, heavy catalog in your lap.

But when you had your wish list, what to do next?

Why, time to take it to the man himself, of course. Santa.

Today, you send a letter or email, or maybe you visit Santa's helper in the red suit at the nearest shopping mall. But there used to be a more ostentatious way of going about it.

Believe it or not, there was a time when TV stations aired shows that were nothing but young children sitting on Santa's lap and telling him what they wanted for Christmas. One of these was "The Santa Show," which aired Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in December on WAAY-31, taking half of the half-hour time slot usually devoted to cartoons.

A similar show aired for a time on what was then the Shoals area's NBC affiliate, WOWL-15.

Unfortunately, little video evidence of "The Santa Show" remains. You can find almost anything on the Internet, but the only video footage I could locate was a partial episode from 1982 (see vimeo.com/24661874).

I can only assume that most children whose parents videotaped their appearance on "The Santa Show" either destroyed the evidence or are too embarrassed by it to upload it to YouTube.

As I explain to my younger friends who don't remember much of the 1980s, to say nothing of the '70s, it was a different time back then.

Local TV stations were desperate for programming and would air almost anything.

It was a strange time in American history: getting big books in the mail, writing lists on paper and sitting on Santa's lap on local television.

Our children will never believe it.

'A Krampus Carol' by Anthony Bourdain

Culture Shock 12.23.10: Take Christmas Eve Eve to heart

Time is almost up, because today is Christmas Eve Eve.

It's not an official holiday. It's not even a semi-official holiday like Christmas Eve or Groundhog Day.

But lots of people observe it — unknowingly — nevertheless.

Unsurprisingly, Dec. 23 — or Christmas Eve Eve, as I like to call it — is one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season, easily outperforming the day that has traditionally held the title of busiest shopping day, the day after Thanksgiving, or "Black Friday."

According to the myth-busting website Snopes.com, Black Friday hasn't done much in recent years to deserve its reputation. Between 1993 and 2002, for example, the day after Thanksgiving placed no better than No. 4 and as low as eighth on the list of busiest Christmas shopping days. Christmas Eve Eve, meanwhile, was the busiest shopping day of the year four times during the same period: 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2000.

The real pattern, according to Snopes, is the final Saturday before Christmas usually claims the top spot, which makes sense. However, Thursdays and Fridays hold their own when they fall on Christmas Eve Eve, like this year.

When I was a child, I thought I was the one who first came up with calling Dec. 23 "Christmas Eve Eve." It seemed totally natural and pure genius. Plus, I'd never heard anyone use the term before.

Unfortunately, since then, I've learned other people have had the same idea. As with most of my best ideas, I eventually found out that someone else had managed to steal it before I'd even thought of it. I blame time-traveling thieves. (Sure enough, someone else also already thought up time-traveling thieves. Is nothing safe?)

While Christmas Eve Eve still lacks the respect of mainstream lexicographers, it does merit an entry in that most indispensable of dictionaries in the 21st century, the Urban Dictionary, online at urbandictionary.com. Go there, and you'll find this straightforward definition of Christmas Eve Eve: "The day before Christmas Eve, 2 days before Christmas." You'll also see it used in a sentence: "Stay away from the malls on Christmas Eve Eve."

Now, this being the Urban Dictionary, you'll also find some — how to put it? — unconventional and highly suspect definitions. For example: "an attractive woman you meet on the first pages of the Bible and on Christmas Eve; some people have got the daft idea that she's Father Christmas' niece."

OK, I have no idea what that means. However the terms "daft" and "Father Christmas" indicate it's possibly some odd British usage, like how the British insist on calling french fries "chips" and potato chips "crisps," or like how they call apartments "flats" and automobile trunks "boots." Really, there is no excuse for this. As long as the English have been speaking English, you'd think they'd be better at it.

Christmas Eve Eve has, over the years, become the true Christmas Eve.

That's because Christmas Eve has halfway joined with Christmas Day to become a kind of super-sized Christmas Day that lasts at least 30 hours. Like the Christmas shopping season, Christmas Day itself is expanding to fill more of the calendar.

By sundown on Christmas Eve, everything is already closed and everyone has finished their shopping — unless they're buying a tacky hat for Cousin Earl at the truck stop. Some families even open gifts on Christmas Eve because they have to hit the road to Grandma's house first thing in the morning. All of that, for a lot people, makes Christmas Eve Eve the real day for last-minute shopping and children's breathless anticipation.

Yes, Christmas Eve Eve even has its own song, titled "Christmas Eve Eve," performed by the musical duo of Paul and Storm, whom I found on YouTube just after I wrote the above paragraph. Also, Paul and Storm had the idea of comparing Christmas Eve Eve to Groundhog Day before I did. (Will this temporal thievery never end?) It's a fun little song, and it should be because it's a lot like "Dead" by They Might Be Giants, which is not the greatest song in the world, but it is close enough that Tenacious D might have had it in mind when they wrote their song "Tribute."

Or maybe not.

So, here's to Christmas Eve Eve. Thankfully, you come only once a year.

Culture Shock 12.02.10: Keeping the Krampus in Christmas

Editor's note: This column was originally published Dec. 3, 2009.

An old tradition that's seeing renewed popularity amounts to Christmas' own version of the good cop/bad cop routine.

The good cop is Santa Claus, aka Kris Kringle, aka St. Nicholas, aka Father Christmas. He's the "jolly old elf" known for his vast, global surveillance system — which he uses to keep track of who's been "naughty" and who's been "nice" — and his knack for breaking and entering.

Everyone has heard of Santa. But probably few have heard of his partner, the "bad cop" in our little tale. He goes by the name Krampus.

A scary, devilish, goat-like fellow with long horns and a bad attitude, Krampus originated centuries ago in German-speaking areas of Europe, where he was especially popular in the Alps.

While Santa bribes children into good behavior with the promise of presents, Krampus keeps them in line with threats of punishment. Santa carries a bag full of toys. Krampus carries a bag filled with naughty boys and girls.

Christmas is rife with Germanic and Scandinavian traditions, some of which, in different forms, go back to pagan solstice celebrations that predate Christianity's arrival in northern Europe. Evergreen trees, Yule logs and mistletoe come to mind. Long before people used mistletoe to steal kisses from the unwary, the plant was best known for killing Baldr, the Norse god of light and beauty.

As years passed, these traditions became part of Christmas, as did, for a while at least, Krampus. But Krampus was perhaps just a bit too wild to settle down in what was becoming an increasingly Christian holiday season. As National Geographic blogger Marc Silver writes, by the 1800s church leaders had marginalized Krampus, making St. Nick a solo act.

By the time German Christmas traditions made their way to England, and later America, Krampus was no longer a major part of the festivities.

Anglo-American Christmas celebrations began adopting German customs like Christmas trees in the 1800s, after Great Britain had resorted to importing monarchs from Germany. German practices became even more prominent following Queen Victoria's marriage to the German-born Prince Albert.

By the time Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" in 1843, Christmas looked much like it does now, with no Krampus in sight.

Ebenezer Scrooge had to get by with three Christmas ghosts instead — or four, if you count Jacob Marley.

That, however, has started to change.

According to Silver, the Austrian state of Salzburg now has more than 180 Krampus clubs devoted to celebrating the long-lost Christmas figure.

Most have sprung up in just the past 20 years.

Now, every Dec. 5, club members recreate the traditional Krampus celebration. They dress in ghoulish Krampus costumes and head out for a night of carousing, which sounds a lot like how adults currently celebrate Halloween in the United States.

Here in America, Krampus is still virtually unknown. And if he weren't, he would add a new wrinkle to the annual debate about the true meaning of Christmas.

But with the Christmas season now starting even before Thanksgiving, maybe there is room for one more Christmas tradition. You don't want to end up on Krampus' list, do you?

Culture Shock 12.03.09: Keeping the Krampus in Christmas

An old tradition that's seeing renewed popularity amounts to Christmas' own version of the good cop/bad cop routine.

The good cop is Santa Claus, aka Kris Kringle, aka St. Nicholas, aka Father Christmas. He's the "jolly old elf" known for his vast, global surveillance system — which he uses to keep track of who's been "naughty" and who's been "nice" — and his knack for breaking and entering.

Everyone has heard of Santa. But probably few have heard of his partner, the "bad cop" in our little tale. He goes by the name Krampus.

A scary, devilish, goat-like fellow with long horns and a bad attitude, Krampus originated centuries ago in German-speaking areas of Europe, where he was especially popular in the Alps.

While Santa bribes children into good behavior with the promise of presents, Krampus keeps them in line with threats of punishment. Santa carries a bag full of toys. Krampus carries a bag filled with naughty boys and girls.

Christmas is rife with Germanic and Scandinavian traditions, some of which, in different forms, go back to pagan solstice celebrations that predate Christianity's arrival in northern Europe. Evergreen trees, Yule logs and mistletoe come to mind.

Long before people used mistletoe to steal kisses from the unwary, the plant was best known for killing Baldr, the Norse god of light and beauty.

As years passed, these traditions became part of Christmas, as did, for a while at least, Krampus. But Krampus was perhaps just a bit too wild to settle down in what was becoming an increasingly Christian holiday season. As National Geographic blogger Marc Silver writes, by the 1800s church leaders had marginalized Krampus, making St. Nick a solo act.

By the time German Christmas traditions made their way to England, and later America, Krampus was no longer a major part of the festivities.

Anglo-American Christmas celebrations began adopting German customs like Christmas trees in the 1800s, after Great Britain had resorted to importing monarchs from Germany. German practices became even more prominent following Queen Victoria's marriage to the German-born Prince Albert.

By the time Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" in 1843, Christmas looked much like it does now, with no Krampus in sight. Ebenezer Scrooge had to get by with three Christmas ghosts instead — or four, if you count Jacob Marley.

That, however, has started to change.

According to Silver, the Austrian state of Salzburg now has more than 180 Krampus clubs devoted to celebrating the long-lost Christmas figure. Most have sprung up in just the past 20 years.

Now, every Dec. 5, club members recreate the traditional Krampus celebration. They dress in ghoulish Krampus costumes and head out for a night of carousing, which sounds a lot like how adults currently celebrate Halloween in the United States.

Here in America, Krampus is still virtually unknown. And if he weren't, he would add a new wrinkle to the annual debate about the true meaning of Christmas.

But with the Christmas season now starting even before Thanksgiving, maybe there is room for one more Christmas tradition. You don't want to end up on Krampus' list, do you?

Childhood holds memories of the best Christmas gift ever

I suspect most people can recall one special Christmas — the Christmas when they received a present so cool, so amazing that it could only be the Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

For Ralphie Parker, the hero of “A Christmas Story,” it was a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model air rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time. I’m still not sure about the “thing.” A clock? A sundial?

For me, it was the Christmas of 1982, when I received my Atari 2600 game console. OK, yeah, what I’d really wanted was a state-of-the-art ColecoVision game system. But it was more expensive than the Atari, and money was tight. Besides, it wasn’t as if any of my friends had a ColecoVision, anyway. 

They all had 2600s, too. Except for the ones who had Mattel’s Intelevision system or Magnavox’s Odyssey2.

Actually, I don’t know anyone who owned an Odyssey2. But I do remember the floor model that mostly gathered dust at the local Otasco store.

Before the Christmas of the Atari, my best present ever had been a Mego brand Batmobile with Batman and Robin action figures. That must have been about 1975. Obviously, in just seven years, my requirements for a satisfactory Christmas present had gotten a lot more stringent.

Christmas ’77 would have been a great Christmas if the first batch of “Star Wars” toys had arrived on time. George Lucas was smart enough to keep all of the licensing rights to his movies, but not smart enough to get the toys into stories in time for the holidays. But maybe some children actually had fun playing with their Early Bird Gift Certificates, which were basically IOUs for action figures.

Some children this year will get MP3 players that have more processing power than my first game system did. It’s easy to forget, especially when the economy is in the dumps, but we’re a lot wealthier as a nation now than we were just 30 years ago.

In the early ’80s, William Shatner appeared in ads extolling the Commodore Vic-20 — “the wonder computer of the 1980s” — which cost “under $300.” The wristwatch I’m wearing now is smarter than a Vic-20, and for about $300 I can buy a decent desktop PC.

Each new Christmas brings rising expectations. I was once happy to get this thing called a “turntable” on which I placed a large, wax disk called a “record album.” When spun on the turntable, the album would play music, along with assorted hisses, pops and crackles.

Today, I’d insist that Santa Claus bring me an iPod that could hold thousands of songs. And, no, a Zune would not be a reasonable substitute.

But even with rising expectations, you reach a point when nostalgia trumps all else. I’ve received better, more advanced Christmas gifts since that Atari 2600, but none that can top it as my best gift ever. After a certain age, Christmas loses something, and not just because children stop believing in Santa. I suspect it’s when puberty hits, and suddenly you have more important things on your mind — like girls or boys or whatever — than what’s under the tree.

That’s when Christmas goes into a time capsule, waiting to be opened only when you have children of your own. And the memories in that capsule can’t be surpassed.

Lexus is running a TV advertisement in which a young child talks excitedly about how his new Big Wheel is the greatest Christmas present ever — at least until the ad shifts to the same child, now an adult, staring starry-eyed at a new Lexus in his driveway.

No one has ever given me a car for Christmas, so I’m not exactly certain how I would react. But, somehow, I think it wouldn’t top a Big Wheel. Or an Atari.

All is quiet on the Christmas front

“Peace on Earth, good will toward men.” That’s what we say at Christmastime, and this year we’re getting it — on one front, anyway.

We’re not hearing much about the so-called War on Christmas. That’s a pleasant change from last year, when the airwaves were filled with chatter about a sinister conspiracy that was supposedly trying to stamp out the holiday season.

Instead, when I Googled the phrase “war on Christmas” this week, most of the recent discussions were about how all of the war talk had settled down.

During the Dec. 12 installment of his Fox News Channel program, Bill O’Reilly, whose voice had been one of the loudest decrying the alleged secular assault on Christmas, declared victory. The War on Christmas was over, and his side had won.

But really, how much has changed? I still see signs that say “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” instead of O’Reilly’s preferred greeting, “Merry Christmas.” Isn’t that a sign that the war is still on?

I suppose it would be, if people hadn’t been saying things like “happy holidays” and “seasons greetings” for decades, long before some people with nothing better to do decided those were fighting words.

The closest thing I’ve seen to a real war on Christmas in the past year is a T-shirt with the slogan “I support the war on Christmas.” Of course, it was a joke. The people who made those T-shirts did so only to irritate blowhards like O’Reilly.

Being a contrarian sort of person, I thought of getting one of those shirts for myself. But I decided I didn’t want to risk getting punched in the face.

If there is anything I abhor, it’s violence against me.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. People are celebrating Christmas this year just as they did last year.

Yes, there are the usual little spats over putting explicitly religious Christmas symbols on public property. The Catholic League, led by the country’s most easily offended man, Bill Donohue, released a list of about a dozen instances in which a town refused to place a Nativity scene on a city lawn or something equally trivial.

Not that Nativity scenes are themselves trivial. They aren’t, and you can see them in front of churches far and wide, which is why one more in front of a courthouse or city hall doesn’t matter. People don’t need the government’s blessing to celebrate Christmas.

But most people don’t get worked up about such legal battles, anyway. How do I know? Well, I’ve seen a lot of houses decorated for the season, and I can’t recall one that had its own Nativity scene. There were lots of plastic Santas and reindeer, though. And since the houses were in Alabama, you can’t tell me that a bunch of Christmas-hating secularists live in them.

If people really did get agitated about the fact that you can’t put up religious symbols on government property, they’d protest by putting up their own — just as some students hold private prayer rallies to protest the fact that you can’t have officially sanctioned prayers in public schools.

It’s not much of a war on Christmas when the vast majority of Americans go about celebrating Christmas as they always have. And guess what? That includes most secular humanists.

Richard Dawkins, the British biologist and atheist who created a stir last year with his book “The God Delusion,” admits to loving Christmas carols. That doesn’t seem like much of a declaration of war, does it?

So, the unpleasant, divisive War on Christmas is over, or as over as something that was never real in the first place can be. If nothing else, it reminds me of the title of a John Lennon song:

“Merry Christmas (War Is Over).”

Some Christmas presents are just like lumps of coal

If you read the letters to Santa that appear in this and other newspapers, you’ll notice that Christmas gifts are a lot cooler than they were years ago.

One letter last week was from a child who asked for a Wii, an Xbox and, just so all bases were covered, a PlayStation 3. Good luck with that. When I was about that child’s age, way back in 1982, I asked for a state-of-the-art ColecoVision game console. Instead, I got an Atari 2600, which was already obsolete, having been replaced that same year by the 5200. I was scarred for life and haven’t owned a home video game system since. Yes, I’m bitter.

But it could have been worse. Much worse.

At this time last year, I was browsing the videos at YouTube and came across decades-old TV commercials for what can only be described as the worst Christmas gifts ever.

Mostly, I blame Ron Popeil. Before the inventor/pitchman took up residence on late-night TV, using infomercials to sell food dehydrators and pasta makers, he was the man behind such contraptions as the Pocket Fisherman and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.

Maybe the Pocket Fisherman was a good idea. But how lazy do you have to be to want to scramble your eggs before you crack open the shells?

Every December, Popeil’s company, Ronco, filled the airwaves with commercials touting its latest must-have technological marvels. And as Popeil assured us in his chirpy voiceover narration, each made for “a great Christmas gift!”

One of Ronco’s biggest sellers was the Smokeless Ashtray. Now, when I was 6 years old, I didn’t need a Smokeless Ashtray. So, I got one for my dad.

Yes, I know. I should have gone with the Pocket Fisherman. The problem with the Smokeless Ashtray was that it sucked up cigarette smoke only when the cigarette was in the ashtray. As I’ve since learned, cigarettes don’t spend much time in ashtrays until after they’re snubbed out.

It occurs to me now that the Smokeless Ashtray was the perfect really, really cheap gift for a child to give to a parent. When young children buy gifts for parents, it’s definitely the thought that counts because children don’t have any money. So, it doesn’t matter that the gift is crap.

My favorite Ronco product, however, was Mr. Microphone. All you had to do was set a radio to the appropriate frequency, and Mr. Microphone would beam your voice into the radio for all around to hear.

As seen on TV, Mr. Microphone was a great way to pick up women, who were suitably impressed by guys who could ask them out via a car stereo. As seen in real life, Mr. Microphone was a poor man’s karaoke machine, provided you could sing a cappella, which defeats the purpose of karaoke.

But Ronco wasn’t solely to blame for the metaphorical lumps of coal in people’s stockings. Consider the Chia Pet.

Amazingly, Chia Pets are now cool, in a kitschy sort of way. But in 1982, when the first Chia Pet appeared in time for the Christmas shopping season, they were just lame. Giving someone cheap, animal-shaped pottery that sprouts weeds was a sincere expression of hatred.

Speaking of gifts for people you hate, you couldn’t go wrong with Shrinky Dinks. Nothing conveys contempt like small pieces of plastic that get even smaller when you bake them in an oven. When my mom insisted I buy a Christmas present for my arch nemesis in elementary school, he got Shrinky Dinks — the festive way to say, “Up yours!”

Still, I get a little nostalgic when I think of the commercials that ran in the early 1980s for Underoos, the children’s underwear that came in designs based on Superman, Wonder Woman and other popular superhero characters.

The commercials featured prepubescent children wearing only their Underoos and thanking the aunts, uncles and grandparents who gave them such great Christmas presents.

You know, now that I think about it, those Underoos commercials are really creepy.

Culture Shock 12.21.06: Non-Christian elements of Christmas there from start

'Twas the week before Christmas, Bill O'Reilly in view
Shouting on the TV as his face turns Yuletide hue.
While his Fox pal John Gibson wrote a book just to say,
"There's a 'War on Christmas'! Purchase your copies today!"

OK, I'll stop now. You get the point. But, really, enough with the "war on Christmas" stuff already. With the shopping and the crowds, folks have enough to worry about without opportunistic blowhards making up a controversy.

Putting the name aside for a minute, Christmas has never been just about Christ. Early church fathers set the date for Christmas to coincide with (and co-opt) pre-existing pagan festivals centered on the winter solstice. Pagan elements have been with the holiday ever since, including the venerable Christmas tree. In fact, it was exactly such non-Christian aspects of the holiday that led many Protestants to virtually ignore Christmas until the Victorian era.

If you think Christmas is "too commercial," blame those same Victorians. They started the commercialization of Christmas back in the late 1800s, along with its transformation into a semi-secular holiday of gift giving and family togetherness. It's that commercialization that made Christmas "safe" for Christians who had religious objections to the celebration.

If keeping the Christ in Christmas meant leaving out everything else, then the result wouldn't really be Christmas. Besides, if O'Reilly and Gibson are looking for a fight, someone should tell them they've already lost.

The secular side of Christmas is firmly part of American culture, and it goes deeper than Rudolph, Frosty, saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" and bland Christmastime love songs by The Carpenters played ad infinitum.

The secular Christmas won when "A Christmas Story," the 1983 comedy about a boy's quest to get the ultimate present — a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time — replaced "It's a Wonderful Life" as Christmas Day marathon viewing.

"A Christmas Story" is our new seasonal fairy tale. And it's all about presents and commercialism, with a dash of (dysfunctional) family togetherness tossed in for good measure. It doesn't have a manger scene, but it does have a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring.

The movie appeals to Americans because it appeals to the child in us all. Sure, my childhood Christmas is several decades removed from the early 1940s Christmas of Ralphie and his Red Ryder. For me, it was an Atari 2600, but the spirit is the same. We associate particular Christmases with what we got, and that reminds us of where we got it.

Given its diverse origins — Christian, Roman, Germanic, etc. — it's only proper that Christmas has returned to being a near universal celebration. It's observed even in Japan, where it's become strangely associated with romance and dining on KFC.

Christmas is both secular and religious, commercial and spiritual, Christian and pagan. It has something to offer everyone, including a message of "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men." The wording may be Christian, but the sentiment has many sources.