![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Watched "very special" Christmas episodes of Glee, Eureka and Warehouse 13 last night. While it was fun to watch two young gay men do "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and Judd Hirsch basically reprise his cranky-old-Jewish-father character from Independence Day, I find myself still wishing they'd been a little more like A Charlie Brown Christmas and less like Rudolph's and the Grinch's equally-revered classic specials. (Glee even had Jane Lynch and Heather Morris re-enact the Cindy Lou Who scene from the latter, fergossakes.)
Now I know this is gonna sound awful weird coming from a well-known militant agnostic and longtime rebel against the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrines, but...would it really have been too much to ask for the writers and producers of these shows to at least make a nod in the birthday boy's direction? Amber Riley (Glee's Mercedes, who has already been shown dragging Kurt to her church's lively services) could have walloped the living daylights out of "O Holy Night" in among all the TV-show and Christmas-album standards. Or Artie could have reminded his Warehouse team that the whole damn thing was started in honor of someone born and raised in his Jewish faith.
In short, it's called Christ-mas for a reason, people...and it ain't red suits, presents and mistletoe. You don't have to believe in the divinity of Jesus or his status as the Savior of humanity (my Songbird does; I don't) to appreciate his impact on the world, the wisdom of his teachings...or the value and importance of his message—the one he got nailed to a tree for spreading, as the late Douglas Adams reminded us. Otherwise, why in the name of all that's holy (you should pardon the expression) would people over at least half the world still be celebrating his birth two millennia and change later?
If the people making TV shows, and the suits at the networks and cable channels that run them, even today still don't feel safe making so much as a token acknowledgment of the religious origin of this holiday (or worry they'd have to give equal time to Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice and too many others), then poor Charlie Schulz may well have lived in vain. Back in 1965, the CBS brass were peeing their Brooks Brothers pants because Sparky insisted on having Linus recite a measly few lines from St. Luke's Gospel to remind his friends of "what Christmas is really all about." Then the Nielsen ratings went through the roof and thank-you letters poured in...but it seems nobody in the industry's learned a damn thing since.
Now I know this is gonna sound awful weird coming from a well-known militant agnostic and longtime rebel against the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrines, but...would it really have been too much to ask for the writers and producers of these shows to at least make a nod in the birthday boy's direction? Amber Riley (Glee's Mercedes, who has already been shown dragging Kurt to her church's lively services) could have walloped the living daylights out of "O Holy Night" in among all the TV-show and Christmas-album standards. Or Artie could have reminded his Warehouse team that the whole damn thing was started in honor of someone born and raised in his Jewish faith.
In short, it's called Christ-mas for a reason, people...and it ain't red suits, presents and mistletoe. You don't have to believe in the divinity of Jesus or his status as the Savior of humanity (my Songbird does; I don't) to appreciate his impact on the world, the wisdom of his teachings...or the value and importance of his message—the one he got nailed to a tree for spreading, as the late Douglas Adams reminded us. Otherwise, why in the name of all that's holy (you should pardon the expression) would people over at least half the world still be celebrating his birth two millennia and change later?
If the people making TV shows, and the suits at the networks and cable channels that run them, even today still don't feel safe making so much as a token acknowledgment of the religious origin of this holiday (or worry they'd have to give equal time to Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice and too many others), then poor Charlie Schulz may well have lived in vain. Back in 1965, the CBS brass were peeing their Brooks Brothers pants because Sparky insisted on having Linus recite a measly few lines from St. Luke's Gospel to remind his friends of "what Christmas is really all about." Then the Nielsen ratings went through the roof and thank-you letters poured in...but it seems nobody in the industry's learned a damn thing since.
