The never-ending War on Christmas

Julian Sanchez has a very smart analysis of modern conservatism and the Palin phenomenon which you should read in its entirety.  Essentially ressentiment is “a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, an assignation of blame for one’s frustration” – and Sanchez applies this word to the current conservative movement, the tea-parties, and the rise to prominence of Sarah Palin.  Or as he puts it:

Conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag.

And more to the point, the source of this frustration is cultural as opposed to political:

Think back to the 2004 RNC—which I happened to be up in New York  covering. After witnessing three days of inchoate, spittle-flecked rage from the people who had the run of all three branches of government, some wag (probably Jon Stewart) puzzled over the “anger of the enfranchised.” And itwould be puzzling if the driving force here were a public policy agenda, rather than a set of cultural grievances. Jay Gatsby learned too late that wealth alone wouldn’t confer the status he had truly craved all along. What we saw in ‘04 was fury at the realization that ascendancy to political power had not (post-9/11 Lee Greenwood renaissance notwithstanding) brought parallel culturalpower.  The secret shame of the conservative base is that they’ve internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy—hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them.

I think this goes a long way toward understanding why each December the rather vaguely defined war on Christmas is ramped up, not so much by those apparently waging war on the season, but by those looking to defend it from its numerous and powerful nemeses.  In the culture wars, enemies needn’t be real to be a threat.  The perception of some powerful and united cultural force out to change the supposed cultural status quo is enough.

This leads quite naturally to conspiracy theories, or to a general cultural paranoia which we see play out in the tea party rallies and protests over healthcare reform and in sharper relief in the birther movement.  Culture warriors need enemies, and if they can’t actually pinpoint who their enemies are, they manufacture them and then manufacture causes as well – like a nefarious plot to shut down Christmas by some elusive cabal of atheistic evangelists.  Then you find examples to fit your narrative and work from there. Because the only thing more important than preserving Christmas is preserving the war on Christmas so that that victimization process can be renewed each year and all that frustration and resentment can find a catalyst. The fact that cultural changes are as unavoidable as the tides means that there’s always fresh material for culture warriors to draw from.

Christmas has just the right amount of symbolism to make it a potent vehicle for this typically undirected outrage – though the tea parties promise to make the war on Christmas, or at least what it represents, a year-long event. Indeed, probably the most important thing about the war on Christmas this year is how it has been eclipsed by the tea parties, and how the conservative movement in general has taken the strategy of the war on Christmas and incorporated it into their everyday playbook.