Cries of the Vintage Warrior
"A Rootbound Christmas Tree"
- Opinion by Kira Schiavone-
December 21th, 2005
I’m not entirely sure what the term “rootbound” means, but I know it’s
something bad that plants get from being in pots that aren’t big enough
for them. A friend of mine recently said that she had “gone over to the
dark side,” and gotten a Christmas tree. Questioned why, she responded
that they had tiny Christmas trees for sale at her local store, and she
had known they were rootbound as soon as she saw them, so she bought
one to take home with her. She called the tree a “poor thing” and said
that it was more rootbound than any other plant she’d repotted.
Apparently being obsessed with Christians isn’t enough, we have to be
cruel to plants to when we commercialize this holiday.
But think about this for a minute: Christmas is a
Christian holiday. There’s a McDonalds in a town that I can’t remember,
and bumper stickers all over the place, and even people shouting at my
school, and all of them say the same thing: the phrase “Jesus is the
reason for the season.” While that might not be true in the
particulars, since Hanukkah and Ramadan fall around the same time, it’s
certainly true in its intended meaning. Christmas is a religious
holiday. Get over it. No matter how much you go on about how it’s Santa
Claus that we’re putting up, and however much you say that the reindeer
have nothing to do with the religion, it’s still about a religion
originally.
Or we can take this in another direction. If it’s
not about a religious holiday, then what is it? Christmas is that
religious holiday that my grandmother forces me to go to church for.
It’s the birthday of baby Jesus. So if the reindeer and the presents
are purely secular, then what holiday are we celebrating? It’s not
Christmas.
Now that I’ve gotten you to admit that you’re
celebrating Christmas, I have something to say to all those who claim
that you shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas- get over it! A quote from
Thomas Jefferson on the separation of church and state: “It does me no
injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Now, is that Nativity scene
on the common hurting you? Is it forcing you to believe in something
other than what you do? No. And if you take exception to it… well,
maybe we can put a giant display of a menorah up there, too. After all,
it is “the holiday season.”
I’m probably not going to be allowed to light my
menorah this season because Hanukkah starts on Christmas Day, and I’ll
be staying with an obsessive Christian relative. That doesn’t mean that
I’m going to complain bitterly and insist that we need to remove all
the Christmas decorations so that everything will be equal. And when
was the last time you saw a giant menorah on the common, anyway? Maybe,
instead of trying to get rid of the decorations or proclaim they aren’t
religious, we should start adding more, from other religions.
After all, isn’t it only fair that all religions get
equal opportunity to flaunt themselves into commercialism? Personally,
I can’t see why anyone would want to let the commercializers ruin
Hanukkah and Ramadan the way they ruined Christmas. They’re much better
off being celebrated by those who really believe in what the holiday is
about.
Even so… Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Pleasant Ramadan, and Joyous New Year!
Kira Schiavone is a high school student who's working on becoming a
professional writer, and enjoys reading and writing rants for the
Fedora Chronicles.
Read Kira's Previous Articles...
