Memo to the producers of holiday-themed TV series episodes

[thatcrazycajun]

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.

Comments

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

What I wouldn't give for a Solstice special right about now!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

This...

I have no issues with the Rabbi. I have tons of'em with the people who claim to be his followers. Despite all the Jews who have made us laugh since the 1920's, there aren't even any Hanukkah specials! The fact that the Maccabeats went to 1.3 million hits on YouTube in 8 days shocked *everyone*...

But none of the mainstream media even acknowledge there is anything *other* than Grinches and triple-axel-cutting beagles and everything coming down to midnight on the 24th instead of wandering around like Nature does.

I don't have any problem with what Sparky did. I just wish the damp-Brooks-Brothers wearers would get their heads around the fact that there's more to America than some guy born in a barn.... who was, in fact, from his circumcision to his ritual burial a good Jew...

And there. I've celebrated Festivus, albeit early; I have aired my grievances. Add that to Hanukkah, Yule, and Christmas, and Boxing Day, and I will have celebrated six holidays by the time all the recycling goes out. No reason to be so damn exclusive. Besides, it's more fun, and you learn things!

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

TOTALLLY this. What was going through my head reading the original post was that dang it all, there AREN'T any Hanukkah specials, so it's impossible for me to sympathize. Sorry, my Cajun friend.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this.

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

To technoshaman: Actually, Rugrats did a holiday themed special including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning this...it's still not the same thing as having a special completely devoted to the one holiday, you know?

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

I remember the Rugrats Hanukkah being aired on TV. Their Kwanzaa special is part of a DVD package.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Ah! I stand corrected then. I'll have to look that up.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with Christmas specials actually being about Christmas, and I prefer the true carols (i.e. songs about the birth of Jesus) to "Christmas songs" about celebrating the holiday. But I think you've gone a little overboard with "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?"

People celebrate a variety of messages that speak to them -- some good ones which speak to their better instincts, some awful ones which speak to their worst instincts. What people celebrate, even for a long time, doesn't necessarily demonstrate anything about how good the message was -- people were slitting bulls' throats for their celebrations for a good deal longer than two millennia. Nor do we actually know much about what message the person whose birthday Christmas is alleged to be actually meant to send... it's been so garbled by spin, from the time of Saul of Tarsus onward, that there's absolutely no way to find out what he actually said without a time machine.

We can know what he's recorded as saying, decide that we like at least some of it, and use him thereby as a convenient excuse to honor the message we hope was his among the many others who have said it. I don't mind the people who believe he did say that stuff celebrating him for it, whether or not they also believe he was divine. I just don't think there's any more foundation for the belief that he said those things than the belief that he was divine -- it's faith in both cases. We don't have uncorrupted data.

And so neither do I mind people who simply have forgotten why all cultures have a holiday involving light at the darkest time of winter making use of the fake birthday some people assigned him centuries ago in order to celebrate the turning of the season and the hope that the summer will come back again. They don't know another way to do it. They do know, in the bottom of their instinctive souls, that most of us have to do something in winter to keep our spirits up. And if they want to borrow Jesus as a flimsy foundation for the purpose of fending off the darkness with light and cheer -- well, everybody else in the last 2,000 years has borrowed him as an excuse for something or other. At least this is a something worth doing in its own right.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

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.

Nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>Nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen.<<
Translation for the goyim, please? :-)

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

It's a Yiddish expression of dismissive skepticism.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele/vol4.326