With the entry into the workforce – at least in “creative” fields – of a generation of people who’ve come to see their feelings as inviolable arbiters of how the world is and should be, the holiday season has become just a little more fraught.
I”m here to help.
Im’ attaching a list of the types of colleagues you can expect to encounter in the modern workplace this time of year.
The NPR Malaise-o-holic: If you listen to National Public Radio, you’d think the nation was gripped by a wave of depression from Thanksgiving through New Years every year. In the world of public broadcasting, the holidays seem to be perceived as a shared ordeal of awful food shared with un-hip, conservative, crassly-commercial relatives that is at best endured and at worst, succumbed to. Don’t believe me? Just ask them. They’ll be happy to share.
The PC Warrior: “Merry Christmas”.
“A-HEM. It’s happy HOLidays“.
This one will also be happy to inform you that “Christmas is really pagan“, smugly unaware that that’s the point, if you’re a Christian. Nobody is born Christian (except Christ, maybe); we’ve all converted from something else, or from nothing.
The Humbug: They hate the holidays And they’ll tell you every time the subject comes up.
The Triggerer: “Merry Christmas!”
“What’s so merry about it?”
Christmas is part of the aggressions foisted on indigenous societies by white male Christianist conquerors, donchaknow.
Father Festivus: Yes, yes, we get it; your mocking of other peoples’ traditions and petty joys is just as big a laugh now as it was when George Costanza talked about it in Seinfeld, what, 55 years ago?
The MacroAggressor: The Macro aggressor combines all the above – the theatrical assumed depression, the Urban Progressive Privilege, the roiling fog of fatigue, the intolerance and the self-adoring – and wraps it with a layer of overt hostility. The MacroAggressor hates the Holiday season, especially Christmas, and anyone who partakes. And, like all the above, they’ll be happy to vent about it at the slightest opportujnity – or even without it.
Anyway – to all the rest of you, may you and your family be blessed by the joy this season brings.
And for the six groups I list above? MERRY CHRISTMAS. In your face. Over and over.
The NPR Malaise-o-holic:
and nothing more typifies the NPR/MPR ethos than the pissy, small-minded, intolerant, mean-spirited, snark that is their yearly broadcast of David Sedaris’ “Santaland Diaries”
A truly loathsome Christmas “tradition”
The NPR Malaise-o-holic…
But if you would just look at Christmas through the lens of class, race and gender, perhaps you would come to not only understand but appreciate NPR/MPR.
Lately, I have been looking at my dog that way too. Now, I better understand him.
This line of critical theory can be applied to almost anything, it certainly enlightened me as why Chevy trucks are superior to Fords.
Greg,
“why Chevy trucks are superior to Fords.”
really?
My current Chevy (1983 Suburban K10 Silverado) leaks oil, every Chevy I’ve owned has leaked oil. Every Chevy eventually falls victim to that genetic oil leak flaw whereas the only Ford I owned that leaked oil (F-100 1949 straight 8) did so because some push rods suddenly poked through the oil pan. My current truck, 1998 Dodge Ram (with historically fragile transmissions) was chosen because no oil leak, and it rusts slower that a Ford or a Chevy
Mac, Sedaris owes his fame and fortune to Ira Glass. His yearly mockery of Christmas is his falcon tribute.
MacArthur,
It was meant as a joke. Brand loyalty is about as rational as leftist hysteria, both are rooted in religion rather then fact.
They report in the news that people spending more in the stores and on line this CHRISTMAS season. And it seems to me that more folks are joyously wishing MERRY CHRISTMAS to each other. Correlation and causation? I’m thinking it’s likely as not.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL, GOD BLESS!!!
Didn’t ya just KNOW it?
“25 Years of Santaland Diaries”
https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2017/12/25-years-of-santaland-diaries/#disqus_thread
Take a tour; savor the precious musings of Collins’ virtue signaling, trained meerkats. Looks like these days, Collins can’t resist lining up with them himself.
There is exactly zero chance any of those dimwits will realize the hypocrisy they mock during the Christmas season is a year round pursuit for themselves.
They are immune to the realization that in just a couple weeks the crass, commercialized display of Christian goodwill generates more tangible help for teh poor peepul than all their rent seeking, self-serving machinations create all year…And it’s all voluntary.
For fun, try and leave a dispassionate, differing viewpoint; hilarity will ensue.
I’m very curious what the Salvation Army will report when they tally up the kettles after the holidays. If their take is up it just might be peoples positive outlook going into the tax cuts next year. If so what might be the talking points from Pelosi and Schumer?………I’d bet all you’ll hear is crickets.