Christmas Makes Me Understand Modern American Conservatism

Much Like Conservatives, I Get Irrationally Angry And Scared When People Don't Share My Traditions

Originally published in December 2020, but updated to be more current.

Some of my annual Christmas decorations

When I was younger, I had a weird annual ritual. I would keep a mental note of how many neighbors decorated their houses for Christmas. I remember feeling angry and even betrayed when a neighbor did not. Across the street from me, my neighbor used to go all out for the holidays, framing their house in lights and decorating all the windows. One year, they only put a simple wreath on their front window. I pouted most of the holiday season. I even remember complaining to my grandmother, who told me it was because a close relative had died. There's a subculture of Italian-Americans that do not celebrate Christmas in a year when a close loved one dies. I do not belong to that subculture.

Even as an adult, it makes me angry to hear people say they don't want to decorate for Christmas or don't care. Melania Trump yanked at my nerves when she said, "Who gives a fuck about Christmas decorations," though she is already well down on my list for bigger reasons. When I read and heard people saying her views on Christmas decorations are the only things they agreed with her on, it felt like a kick in the nuts.

I have been aware that this feeling has been entirely irrational all my adult life. It's just decorations, and I have no right to judge anyone for not wanting to celebrate. Let me explain where it comes from and how I believe it relates to the emotional reaction that drives American Conservatism.

As a kid, nearly every house on my block was decorated for Christmas. It was a primarily White-European Catholic neighborhood, so everyone had something up: lights and decorations covering the house and yard or just some lights around a window and a tree. My block is mostly semi-detached or detached private one- or two-family homes, but closer to the corner, there are townhouses. I remember one year when one of the townhouses strung Christmas lights from the roof to the sidewalk fence in order to create a Christmas tree-type design on the house's facade, with a giant star on the roof. When I walked out my front door and saw it up the block, I felt joy. Another year, when I was much older, I stepped up on my pool deck to smoke a cigarette and heard Christmas music. Several houses down, a neighbor had installed a giant inflatable Christmas scene featuring a tree, a snowman, a Santa Claus, and a reindeer on the roof of his garage. It played music, and the figures blinked to the beat. I don't know if I ever smiled so brightly.

Over the years, though, as the neighborhood changed, fewer and fewer houses were decorated (though the number has increased again in the past decade). In 2002, my neighbor across the street died, suffering a heart attack while walking out of a bank. After that, their house was never decorated again. I wish I had taken photos of the decorated house to remember it. I still remember the last day it was decorated, New Year’s Eve, 2001.

As the years went by, I would wait to see if the same decorations went up as last year, and one after another, houses that were decorated the year before were not this time. I became angry, bitter, and even scared. I feared that my house might be the last one decorated one day, and perhaps the rest of the block would complain or demand that I don't do it. The fact that others were not joining in on my Christmas traditions and beliefs made me feel they were in peril, even at the risk of being taken from me. I feared being alone and isolated, or worse, persecuted.

Then I realized. This is what drives American Conservatism. More than anything else, tax cuts, freedom, liberty, or whatever other buzzword or phrase conservatives in this country use to defend their worldview is all based on one thing: cultural grievances and fear. Grievance and anger that people are not following or taking part in time-honored American traditions that they've come to love and respect, and fear that as more and more shy away from them, they too will be forced to give them up.

The Republican Party offered them a chance to stop the tide of time, but with a trade-off: the increasing income gap, corruption, and endless wars. Enough American voters accepted that trade-off, forcing the Democratic Party to follow suit to regain some of those voters.

That paradigm still exists and may even have gotten worse in the last decade. It was important to these voters to defend what they considered traditional values that defined the America they knew. The changing culture of the mid-20th Century, and now in the 21st Century, threatened them. A lot of this is racism, yes, but it is also about American exceptionalism and the need for some set of values and traditions that define America. It's also about Christianity and the Protestant work ethic. The value set saw America as a counterbalance first to the absolute monarchies and theocracies of Europe and later to the tyrannical and anti-individualistic Communist power led by Soviet Russia and China. In this version of America, the family dynamic was pre-ordinated: a working husband, a homemaker wife, dutiful children who would grow up to be workers or soldiers if they were boys, or obedient wives if they were girls. The races had their place; blacks were subjugated to servant roles and perhaps teaching roles. Latinos were immigrants who cleaned tables or picked fruit. America was a force for good in the world and defended itself with military might. Patriotism was vital, and everyone was expected to salute and honor the symbols of America: the flag, the anthem, and the President. Men were men, boys were boys, women were women, and girls were girls. People put in a hard day's work if they want to eat, have shelter, or visit the doctor, and you always respect authority, even if that authority may not be deserving of power.

This version of America still exists in many parts of the country. Still, starting in the 1960s, as culture changed and Civil Rights and Women's Rights became issues that shifted society, these values increasingly became less relevant. To those who still wished to live by them, it felt like they were coming under attack. To them, these values were at risk of eradication. Just like I thought my neighbors and friends might go so far as to outright ban me from decorating for Christmas, they felt like liberals would one day tell them they can't be homemakers, go to church, play football, or salute the flag.

That is where the similarities end, however. Unlike conservatism, I have never acted on or explored my reactions beyond just noting them. I have never sought to punish or retaliate against neighbors who didn't decorate or friends who said they hated decorating. I never sought to force them to conform. I, instead, focused on my own joy. I added more lights, more decorations, and more ideas. I made my Christmas village bigger. I put lights on my home office window (which faces nothing but the garage wall). I even went so far as to decorate rooms we rarely enter. There are decorations in a bathroom that are only ever used if the other one is occupied.

Conservatives, meanwhile, seek not only to discourage but ban anything that goes against their values. Don't kneel during the national anthem, don't say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" (Really, I'm a Christmas radical, and this doesn't even bother me), don't identify as a gender that wasn't the one you were assigned at birth, or worse, no gender at all. In 2017, there was an interview with an Obama-Trump voter in Ohio who said he voted for Trump because he was angry his three kids left Ohio for jobs in other parts of the country (they were a PR executive in Philadelphia, a software engineer in Colorado and a finance manager in New York). At the end of the interview, he expressed anger that there were "Mexicans" bussing tables at Cracker Barrel while his kids could not find jobs in Ohio and return "home" to be close to family. What makes a man angry that his children have high-paying jobs in other cities rather than a minimum-wage job bussing tables at Cracker Barrel in Ohio?

An irrational reaction to what he sees as the loss of his values. He and his ancestors put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into his rural town. The town was his home; his family had been there for generations. It was insulting that his children should leave it for a world that doesn't conform to his values. If it weren't for "elite coastal liberals" convincing them they needed to work high-paying jobs and move to the cities, perhaps they'd stay home, bus tables at Cracker Barrels, and the family would still be together. Conservatism, or the Trumpist version of conservatism, spoke to him. It promised to protect these values, push them on others, and destroy the competing social structure that "lured" his children away.

I view Christmas traditions the same way conservatives see their traditions and values. Perhaps they recall happy memories of a simpler, kinder life from their youth. Maybe they felt safer, more welcome, and more understood when those values were universally accepted and adhered to, as I thought when more people decorated or shared my love of Christmas.

But as I grew older, I realized that while I may one day be the only one left covering my house in Christmas cheer, it will never be taken from me. It can't be. No one, except maybe a mean old lady looking for trouble on a homeowners association, will ever keep me from decorating for Christmas and doing the things that bring me joy this time of year. I've learned that in doing it, I've inspired more people to join in than I had anticipated. Friends of mine decided to put up lights because they saw mine.

Conservatives, meanwhile, have doubled down on the idea that their values need to be enforced to remain relevant and that people cannot be allowed to stray from them. It is up to you to adjudicate whether it speaks to an insecurity in those values – or, more likely, a feeling of superiority. In recent years, progressives have gotten caught up in the same dynamic, especially on issues like mask mandates during COVID-19, transgender issues, and the War in Gaza. Perhaps if they sold their values better, rather than just putting down or threatening those who don't follow them, they might win some converts. I did.

But I guess you would have the same faith and belief in my values in the magic of Christmas to have the security to do that.