Prince George collective
Statement for the holiday season
What does a Communist think about the holidays? Does one forsake the holidays altogether, as religious mumbo-jumbo, and bah-humbug their way through the season?
Does one simply forsake their ideals for the day and give in to the corporate version of the holidays that has been shoved down out throats through the years? What does a Communist, or for that matter, a progressive person, do?
The holiday season, known as Christmas to Christians, comes in many different forms, and with many different names through the world’s different cultures and religious faiths.
Christmas it self actually has roots going back to 3000 B.C., when it became a pagan holiday of the celebration of the birth of the Egyptian king, Osiris. The holiday was adopted, and changed by Christianity, but many of our current holiday traditions have pagan origins.
This is fine for you, if you follow a religious faith which holds celebrations around this time of year, which many do. But what if you are an atheist? Many, but not necessarily all, Communists are. Underneath the religious rhetoric, and the corporate cash grabbing, there is something that even the atheistic Marxist can celebrate. These causes for celebration include the growth of our party and its achievements, or the continuing fight for a better society, or the achievement of these goals in other nations such as Cuba. These are just a few examples, I’m sure that each person can think of several more reasons.
What about Santa Clause? As it would turn out, the idea of Santa Clause also has origins in pagan religious mythology. Santa Clause has gone through name changes, and changes of appearance through different time’s, places, and cultures, and lives on today in Coca Cola advertisements, where he has been reduced to a symbol of corporate greed. As comrade Zella of the Prince George collective aptly pointed out, Santa Clause is a basis for blind faith. Children are taught to believe in Santa from a young age, society as a whole goes to great lengths to preserve the myth in children’s minds, and to deceive them until they reach a certain age. Sadly, when the belief of Santa is shattered by realization of the truth, there remains a tendency toward blind faith. Many people simply believe what they read in the corporate media without a second thought for example.
So what does a Communist do about Santa? Some comrades have begun replacing Santa Clause with “Marxy Clause” or “Marx Clause”.
At first thought some comrades might cry blasphemy about such a thing, to unite Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, with Santa Clause. But to a Communist Karl Marx is indeed Santa Clause, he has given us a truly wonderful gift, the very ideology that we live by, a plan for a better future, what could be greater?
This holiday season celebrate with family, friends and comrades, help out the needy however you can, decorate in true Communist fashion, and spread Communist greetings. For example, this year Comrade Michelle has created a large hammer and sickle out of red lights, better that in the front window than the nativity scene, in our opinion. Comrade Stephen has created two cards for the holiday season, featuring Marx, Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh. We all need to think of how to make the holiday season compatible with Marxist ideology. Christmas is a holiday that has been adapted from paganism, into several different forms by different cultures and religions. Who is to say that Marxists can not also adapt it and change it for ourselves? If we simply choose to reject it all together and sit around saying bah-humbug like the greedy old capitalist scrooge, not only will we be unhappy ourselves, but we will be looked at as grumpy, stuck up commies who are no fun at all, and that isn’t going to help us out in any conceivable way.
So that is why the Prince George collective says...
Happy holidays!