It's gotten to that point in December where the incessant blasts of holiday music at work and elsewhere are starting to make me a little loopy. So this bit from No More Mr Nice Blog is particualrly apt:
The people who are complaining about the secularization of Christmas in contemporary America probably shouldn't step into the Wayback Machine......looking into the past will not yield up any meaning of the Christmas holiday that most of us will recognize. The December date on the festive calendar two centuries ago was an occasion for public brawling by wandering crowds of inebriates.
Until Christmas was transformed in the 1830’s and 40’s, it was not unlike Mardi Gras. Men dressed as women and vice versa; off-key, discordant, squeaky, tub-thumping bands marched through the streets; liquored-up groups of revelers would force their way into the households of honest burghers to demand money, food and drink. When they managed to get what they came for, it wasn’t Christmas alms or charity, but something close to extortion.... These bands of not-so-merry makers would stand in front of homes and wassail those inside with such songs as this:
We’ve come here to claim our right ...
And if you don’t open your door
We will lay you flat upon the floor.That's Nicholas von Hoffman in The New York Observer (his source is The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday by Stephen Nissenbaum).
