I used to live a block west of Garrison Keillor when I lived in St. Paul. Occasionally when out jogging, I’d cross paths with the humorist, out pushing his daughter in a stroller, and I’d nod politely, as talking in such a situation would be un-Minnesotan. I knew quite a bit of Keillor’s oeuvre, of course; growing up in Minnesota is was impossible not to know a bit about the fictional hamlet of Lake Wobegon; indeed, I did a sixth-grade map project about a search for Lake Wobegon, which, as all Minnesotans know, is located under the fold they made in the map to hide the fact that the state was just a bit too big.
At any rate, I’ve seen A Prairie Home Companion live, and I’ve read Keillor’s writings in the Star Tribune for years, and generally speaking, I like the guy. But even though Keillor is the apotheosis of “One of Us,”1 I can’t let his latest missive go. Because unfortunately, whether intended in humor or not, Keillor has written a ham-handed, angry, and anti-Semitic column about Christmas that is, quite flatly, offensive. And that doesn’t even get to the part where he attacks my religion.
Keillor starts off okay, talking about what a douche Larry Summers is. Okay, I think we can all agree on that, and if Keillor talks about his financial mismanagement of Harvard rather than his comments that women’s girl brains can’t handle science, well, Summers’ stupidity is a target-rich environment. Then, suddenly and without warning, Keillor takes a hard right turn into Lake Bigoted:
You can blame Ralph Waldo Emerson for the brazen foolishness of the elite. He preached here at the First Church of Cambridge, a Unitarian outfit (where I discovered that “Silent Night” has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God), and Emerson tossed off little bon mots that have been leading people astray ever since. “To be great is to be misunderstood,” for example. This tiny gem of self-pity has given license to a million arrogant and unlovable people to imagine that their unpopularity somehow was proof of their greatness.
And all his hoo-ha about listening to the voice within and don’t follow the path, make your own path and leave a trail and so forth, encouraged people who might’ve been excellent janitors to become bold and innovative economists who run a wealthy university into the ditch.
Now, do I believe that the Unitarians at First Church of Cambridge reworked “Silent Night?” Yeah, sure I do. It seems like the kind of thing my fellow UUs would do. Of course, being Unitarians, I’ll bet you a mythical sawbuck that half the congregation goes ahead and sings the original lyrics anyhow, and a non-trivial number try to sing in German, and nobody much cares, because that’s how Unitarians roll. Of course, the fact that it is a German hymn — “Stille Nacht” — rather suggests that the lyrics have already been reworked. Come on, Garrison, real Christians sing in German.
Also: Ralph Waldo Emerson? Transcendentalist philosopher, author of “Self-Reliance,” the man who said, “A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness”? That Ralph Waldo Emerson? Really? Huh. I guess I don’t see how Emerson’s philosophy of individual responsibility and nonconformity leads to a conformist Harvard president betting money in the stock market, but hey, that must be the “joke.”
Indeed, you’re going to find that this column by humorist Keillor is heavy on “jokes.” Not, alas, jokes.
All right, so far, we just have an incoherent jab at Unitarians, the kind Unitarians make weekly.2 It wasn’t a particularly funny joke, but okay, I can let it slide. They’re not all gonna be gems.
What comes next, though, crosses over from not particularly funny to outright offensive.
Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.
Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.
Now, here is where I as a Minnesotan am required by law to say that these two paragraphs don’t say what they say. They’re not a bitter, angry complaint that Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” and that Garrison Keillor surely didn’t mean to suggest that non-Christians can’t celebrate Christmas.
But I’m not so sure that’s true. And even if it is true — that this is meant as a joke — it fails the first rule of comedy: it isn’t funny.
Indeed, while Keillor may be attempting satire here, it doesn’t really read as satirical. It reads as a particularly nasty barb, a shot across the bow of non-believers. Moreover, who is Keillor’s target here? I think I’m supposed to think it’s intolerant Christians, but I don’t think that. I really feel like his target is Unitarians and Jews, and other nonbelievers during the holiday season. This doesn’t feel like satire. It doesn’t read like satire. This reads angry.
I want to give Keillor the benefit of the doubt here. I really do. But I’m sorry, I just can’t. Whether he meant to or not, he penned a column that is nasty and offensive, and yes, anti-Semitic. And whatever he meant, that’s how the words read to more than a few people. I hope that Keillor apologizes quickly. And I hope that he doesn’t fall back on the tired, “I was just joking” defense. Because I’m sorry, Garrison, jokes are supposed to have humor embedded in them, and they’re not supposed to afflict the afflicted. This is a disappointing column from someone who should be better than this.
I guess it’s like Ralph Waldo Emerson once said — “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”
- In Minnesotan, “One of Us” denotes a native Minnesotan, especially one who “made it big.” It usually refers to a native, or at least someone who lived here a long time, but it can include someone who got the hell out of Dodge the second he or she could, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Bob Dylan. [↩]
- Seriously. A running joke at my church is the fact that the last line in our usual chalice-lighting reading has been rendered alternately as “Spirit of Life” or “Spirit of Freedom,” and that we have about an equal division of people saying each. We find this to be both amusing and fitting. [↩]
Vei iz mir! He should grow like an onion…with his head in the ground.
Seriously, though, whether or not he intended this as satire, it doesn’t work because the ending of the piece makes clear he is writing as himself, not in the persona of some stupidly curmudgeonly “believer.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time he’s written something creepily and ineptly offensive for Salon.
I’ve never really cared for Keillor, but I went off his work for good a few years ago when he wrote this piece at Salon. Allow me to excerpt: “The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men — sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.”
It’s an essay about putting the children first–won’t someone please think of the children!–which relies for its punch on the ideas that gay men are selfish, that wearing unusual clothes is on the face of it selfish and that not only was old-fashioned divorceless marriage better for the children but that gay marriage is probably going to make things even worse because the gays, they’ll be getting the divorces too. There’s also a strong undercurrent in the article that being gay is itself an act of selfishness because it causes one to deviate from the norm, making others uncomfortable.
I admit that I’m pretty surprised by the out-and-out anti-semitism in this one, though. Deeply, deeply unpleasant.
I’ve disliked Keillor for a long time because so much of his humor is about being resigned to a bad situation. On the other hand, if this is what he’s like when he isn’t resigned…..
I’m Jewish, and for whatever reason, I’m not getting anti-Semitic vibes (and he seemed more hostile to Unitarians than to Jews) so much as stupid curmudgeon vibes. Keillor doesn’t understand that holiday customs are made by the general public. The only reason there are so many popular Jewish Christmas songs is because Christians like those songs and keep playing them.
I got tired of Keillor many, many years ago when his Lake Wobegon stuff seemed to move from gentle good-natured poking to mocking parody. I can’t say exactly when it happened, but I noticed it more as time went along.
Then, when I was still working at the daily newspaper on the copy desk, he started writing his column and I had to edit it…it confirmed what I had thought about his Lake Wobegon stuff. Instead of using small, homey examples to illustrate universal truths — which I thought his early Wobegon stuff did quite well — it became all about privileged platitudes that only HE could see and HE would bring to lowly us if we would just listen. There is a very fine line between the two, and it takes a skilled writer to make sure you don’t bleed over from one into the other. He did quite awhile ago.
I also get tired of his ruminations from 30,000 feet when he’s jetting to and from Norway and how awesome thoughts that come to you at 30,000 feet are.
That’s it! Henceforth this Keillor fellow is officially prohibited from singing ‘It Came Upon a Midlight Clear.’
Feh. We can take our blocks and go home too.
—Myca
I’m a little confused. Is the issue here that people are taking Christmas songs and secularizing them? Feh. I confess to being annoyed by that recent commercial that uses and abuses “Joy To The World”. But it doesn’t rise to anger.
Hey – people want to celebrate during the Christmas season, go right ahead. Sing whatever you want, too. And I’ll celebrate my way and sing whatever I want (and I do quite a bit of singing, I’ve got both church and my third concert of the last 2 weeks tomorrow, in fact).
Inside Mr. Kellior’s (as usual) offensiveness there is, however, a valid point. You can say you’re celebrating Christmas if you put up a tree and sing carols and give out presents and get together with seldom seen relatives and drink too much (the latter two often having a causality relationship).
But there is a reason for the season. We don’t celebrate Christmas because our ancestors had pagan festivals marking when the days started to turn longer (although that likely affects the timing). We celebrate Christmas because once upon a time, about 2000 years ago, a Savior to all men and women was born to bring us our salvation. Celebrate that – however you think best – and you’re celebrating Christmas. Celebrate anything else and you’re having a holiday.
There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Everyone should have a holiday and have fun. I wouldn’t want to take holidays and songs away from people. But it’s just a holiday. It’s not Christmas.
clearly he has not heard robert zimmerman’s new album
I don’t get what he’s so worked up about. Rewriting Christmas songs is a grand and ancient tradition!
Manju —
I wish I could unhear Robert Zimmerman’s new album. :P
RonF —
The reason for the season is complex, and different for different people. I don’t celebrate Christmas because of Jesus, and I can make a good argument that nobody really does (after all, Jesus’ birthday was most likely sometime in late October in 4 BCE, and the 25th was chosen specifically to replace the previous Sol Invictus holiday; the holiday itself was much different before the 1800s; &c.). But that doesn’t mean that I’m right; people can celebrate Christmas for the reason they celebrate Christmas, and that, to me, is a wonderful and joyous thing.
As a Jew, I’ll second Nancy’s objection to claiming anti-Semitism here. I just don’t see it because of one jibe at Irving Berlin. But honestly, his remark was kind of a stupid thing to say. Driving home today I heard all kinds of Christmas songs on several radio stations and not one of them was by a Jew.
If I were Unitarian, I expect I’d be pretty offended by this. Even if it is a joke, it kinda crosses the line a bit. And also I’m against the new style of “I’m going to be racist/as offensive as possible” sort of humor because when called out everyone says “its just a joke!” This seems to be that sort of thing.
If you want to see real anti-Semitism, check out this printed letter to the editor in the Concord Monitor: http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/OPINION/912160354/1290/48HOURS
RonF —
I was raised Christian, in the sense that most people in the USA are Christian, and I’d say that, for most US Christians, Christmas is not really about the birth of a religiously significant person. For most people, it’s about getting together with family and friends, exchanging presents, and lights and warmth during a cold and dark time of the year. (I don’t know what motivates people South of the equator.) The story of Jesus is just another one of those traditions people associate with the season, like the story of Santa Claus or of Rudolph.
One indication of this is that even though, in religious terms, Easter is a far, far more significant holiday than Christmas, not even the most devout Christians make of Easter the sort of production that people make of Christmas.
Re: Garrison Keillor
I stopped finding GK interesting a long time ago. His appeal arose out of his being sort of a nobody, and knowing he was a nobody, and now that he’s a Somebody, and is acting like it, the charm is gone. The most obvious example is his insistence on singing duets with professional musicians: you get the feeling that he thinks he’s actually on their level.
Unfortunately, he can fill the house every week with fans who will think he’s great no matter what he does or says, so he’d have a hard time getting back to that Minnesota mindset.
Found this very anti-semitic.
I confess I’m totally confused by this last paragraph:
Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.
You see, to me the wassailing and falalalaing and pudding and things represent celebrating Christmas, but Keillor seems to list these things under the rubric of Not-Christmas. So obviously there’s a failure of understanding on my part, but I don’t see his point.
Also, RonF’s incorrect – many people are quite fond of the pagan-style Christmas, or are atheists who nevertheless quite like the conviviality and the rituals of the season, and while all the original motivations are open to question, there’s much stronger evidence for a solstice-festival and tree-worship than there is for the Son of God being born on December 25th, as others have pointed out. So you may want to wish this kind of celebration away, but unfortunately RonF, you can’t. (A lot of us would like to wish away the consumerist interpretation of Christmas that the corporations want to foist on us – good luck with that one.)
Keillor has *always* been a painfully boring pompous douchebag. He invented one mildly amusing joke years ago, and he’s been selling it ever since.
Perhaps you misunderstand. I’m on board that the timing of Christmas is tied to pagan influence. But the fact that Christians take time out to celebrate Christmas at all is tied to the birth of Jesus. And in turn the reason that everything stops for a week or so to celebrate Christmas is that the vast majority of Americans are at least nominally Christians..
Now –
How many people take time out to go to church, perhaps have some private devotions and truly observe the religious aspects of this time of year is certainly debatable. “Not enough” is an answer I’d accept, but what the actual nubmers are is pretty hard to measure. Perhaps we could count the number of people in church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day vs. an average Sunday. I know we can expect twice the people we usually have at my parish. I think that the majority of Christians in the U.S. observe the religious significance of the holiday in some form or another.
Actually, that’s a strong argument that you’re wrong.
And if you think I have a problem with other people piggybacking on the season and celebrating their own holiday in their own way, you’re wrong. As is pointed out, that’s what we as Christians did to start this all out. Sing all you want, and steal our tunes as you will. My house itself is festooned with greenery and I’m well aware that has nothing to do with Christianity.
On the one hand, it’s better than or at least distinct from Bill O’Reilly-style “why can’t Jews celebrate Christmas like real Americans?”
On the other hand, “I don’t mind if they celebrate as long as they call it something else” sounds awful familiar.
Yule is a pagan holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Christmas instead or dance around in Christian robes for your mass or something. Go worship a cross, go alleluiaing or in excelsis deoing until you ascend, swill eggnog until you go into diabetic shock, but don’t mess with decorating an evergreen tree to honor a child born of a virgin in December.
That’s ours.
—Myca
AND WHAT’S MORE!
Since Christmas a syncretic blend of various religious traditions taken from a number of Christian and pre-Christian sources and combined to form a meaningful whole, frankly, it’s totally Unitarian.
A little from column A, a little from column B? That’s our thing! That’s what we do!
—Myca
PS. I just got back from the UUCB’s annual Christmas Pageant. I played ‘young Jesus’.
Actually, Christmas is significantly less big a deal in South America, and the really big deal is Easter, with all of Holy Week being an official holiday, with people who work in the cities taking off and traveling back to their home villages.
It’s certainly not like they don’t celebrate Christmas, but Christmas is more like Easter for us, and Easter has the much broader social significance and involves a lot more hoop-la.
And wouldn’t you know it, but that tends to be the harvest season in a good chunk of South America, about the equivalent of our Thanksgiving.
On the winter solstice – June 24 – a lot of people celebrate St. John’s Day with fireworks, bonfires, hot drinks, roasted nuts, etc. In Paraguay, it was something like a combination of Halloween and Mardi Gras, with people in costumes playing tricks on each other, streakers, and lots of games involving fire.
How does anyone know whether the people who aren’t religious Christians are celebrating Christmas or something else? I mean, as far as I know, I (a Jew) get a day off of work for “Christmas.” Am I celebrating Christmas because I do not insist on going to work when the building is closed? If I put up lights on my house (which I’ve personally always heard referred to as “Christmas lights”) am I usurping your precious religious holiday? I mean please. If meant seriously, whether made by Keillor or RonF, the argument that everyone else should back off your religious holiday is BS. We are basically FORCED to celebrate Christmas in this country. I’m not going to insist on working a day that my office is closed; and I’m not going to insult people who say “Merry Christmas” to me by telling them I don’t celebrate Christmas. And if I enjoy a playfully lit house, I will put up “Christmas lights.”
All the “Christmas-hoarding Christians” can’t have “A Christmas Carol” either b/c that’s a Unitarian story (Jesus is never mentioned in it once!)
As annoying as Keillor’s anti-Unitarian statements were, I find it hard to get too offended and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m very accustomed to people “not getting” UUs? Or maybe I don’t feel targeted as a Unitarian in this culture (maybe in minor ways, but there’s no really bad stuff in recent history). I’m actually more offended by the anti-Semitism, even though I’m not Jewish.
But that aside, where/what IS the “rewritten” Silent Night? The “Silent Night” in my UU Hymnal is the traditional, “Christian” one. Unless there’s a new Hymnal I don’t know about?
This reminds me of an interesting thing about many UU hymns. I grew up Presbyterian, and when I became a UU 12 years ago, I noticed that some of the melodies of the hymns were familiar to me, but with the words completely changed. I had thought the UUs must have just taken the music and re-written it. Turns out that this wasn’t quite the right story. Instead, back when they were first written (late 19th century, I think), composers would write and then distribute the music to different denominations, who would then write their own words. So the UU hymns in question were actually just as “original” as the Christian ones.
What I picture when I read articles like this:
http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloud.jpg
What is it that turns men of retirement age into Andy Rooney?
If meant seriously, whether made by Keillor or RonF, the argument that everyone else should back off your religious holiday is BS. We are basically FORCED to celebrate Christmas in this country.
Thank you for articulating that. This, I think, is what I found most offensive about the piece. And I think this is the respect in which it is more anti-semitic, as opposed to the dig at Irving Berlin. We have Christmas shoved down our throats whether we like it or not, and now Mr. Keillor is angry that we’ve imposed on him by writing a few Christmas songs that became incredibly popular.
Just to give one example of how ubiquitous and unavoidable Christmas is … just today my son asked me what the blessing is on Santa. He said, “I know the beginning is ‘Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha olam’ but what comes next?” I sincerely apologize, Mr. Keillor, that my 4-year-old had the temerity to hone in our precious celebration. I won’t hold my breath waiting for an apology from you for imposing your holiday on my family.
And really, nobody forces Christians to listen to “White Christmas.” As some of you may be aware, Orrin Hatch has written a Hanukkah song. I think it is, as my husband put it, “goosebump bad,” but if 30 years from now, it’s become a Hanukkah standard, it won’t be Hatch’s fault. It will be the fault of Jews who liked the song and listened to it.
What I think is quite offensive about the piece – the more I think about and process it – is that he blames two very marginal groups (Jews and Unitarians – collectively we’re probably about 5 or 6 percent of the population, if that) for something that Christians have done to themselves. If you want to object to the secularization and commercialization of Christmas, fine, but don’t blame outsiders for your own actions.
Dear Jews and Unitarians of the world: be proud that your religious culture does not include abominations like “Chrissy the Christmas Mouse”. Christmas has become a bloated economic behemoth, a twisted monster that rolls around our culture for all of December. At this point it is so hideously deformed that it’s wholly unreasonable to complain about any possible perversions people come up with.
Keillor? Meh.
But thanks for the happy chuckle with this:
because that’s how Unitarians roll
For those interested in trivia, here’s a list from Tablet of the the Top 10 Christmas Songs by Jews.”