Each December as a child growing up in Edmonton, my grandparents would mail a new dress for the annual school Christmas concert. They were frilly, layered with tulle and lace, often covered in bows, and adorned with red and gold flourishes. I was a tomboy who despised dresses — but would always make an exception for my Christmas dress. The Christmas concert was sacred.
We prepared for weeks, and it was serious business — if the choir teacher was ever stern with the children, it was during preparation for the Christmas concert. On the day of, it was a thrill to dress up and head out in the snowy Alberta cold — in the dark — to the school gymnasium.
I recall my Grade 1 teacher, Ms. Cook, painting red circles on the girls’ cheeks with a tube of her own lipstick, and tying purple lace bows in our hair so we all looked like dolls. She placed sashes made of black crepe ribbon on all the boys, who were meant to look like toy soldiers. We were going to sing “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” and we needed to look the part.
In the days after, neighbours went carolling. Families brought Christmas treats and hot chocolate to share with everyone at the local outdoor ice rink. People used Canada Post to mail heavy loaves of homemade fruit cake to their friends and family across the country. My neighbour dressed as Santa Claus and brought a small gift — a crocheting set — to our door on Christmas Eve. There might be family members you only knew from their appearance at the annual turkey dinner. There was a communal sense of festivity and goodwill throughout the entire month of December.
It didn’t matter if your family was staunchly atheist, like mine. Christmas was huge. It was a cultural celebration for all Canadians, Christian or otherwise. It transcended religion; everyone was welcome. We atheists sang “Silent night, holy night” without hesitation. In today’s lingo, we would have called it “diverse” and “inclusive.”
These days, my kids have no concept of a Christmas concert. If we are lucky, the school will put on a 30-minute “family sharing music show” on a Tuesday morning. The closest thing one can anticipate to a Christmas carol is “Jingle Bells.” No one is expected to dress up. The “Christmas break” is now the “winter break.” No one goes carolling. It’s not merry, it’s happy; and it’s not Christmas, it’s the holidays.
Canadians are killing Christmas.
We’re killing it in the same self-flagellating manner that we used to bin, sabotage and forsake so much of western culture and its (partly) Judeo-Christian roots. From Canadians tearing down Sir John A. Macdonald statues to burning churches across the country, few things are more in favour today than openly despising our own culture and traditions. Christmas included.
It came as no surprise, then, in November 2023, when the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) published a nonsensical diatribe about how Christmas Day being a statutory holiday is an example of “systemic religious discrimination” in a “colonialist” Canada. No matter that the West was founded on ideals of liberalism and tolerance — including tolerance of other faiths — our own traditions must be denounced by any citizen of moral valour. Christmas, frankly, is icky and, rather than smelling of fresh pine and butter tarts, reeks of racist intolerance and a dusty British Crown.
The CHRC has since attempted to walk its statements back, but its original paper is available for all to see and confirm.
Another longstanding criticism about Christmas is that it is largely, if not wholly, a corporate holiday. This was clearly false, decades ago — but has become the de facto state of things. There’s little left of Canadian Christmas, aside from Amazon deliveries and near-stampedes at the Apple Store. While we are ashamed of our cultural traditions, retailers are certainly not ashamed of milking cash from the desiccated corpse of Santa Claus. And so, by being cynical of a traditional Christmas, we have fashioned Christmas into something we should indeed feel cynical about.
What do we have to do to bring Christmas back? Perhaps we can sneak it back onto the calendar — past the judgmental gaze of the woke “progressives” hellbent on tearing down all things western — by rebranding Mrs. Claus as an “intersectional feminist elf rights activist” who holds a PhD in the inherent white supremacy of snow blizzards. Or, maybe we can simply restore Christmas on our own.
Attending midnight mass at a 100-year-plus cathedral is intoxicating. Baking cookies with our children and sharing them with friends is a throwback to Christmases of yore. Creating family traditions that don’t involve gifts takes the day back from retailers. Carolling down the block is not advisable for all of us, but I wouldn’t turn you away.
Merry Christmas, Canadians.
National Post