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The Vice of Ingratitude; or, How I’m Bad at Christmas

photograph of Santa Claus offering a gift and money

Christmas is, without question, my favorite holiday. I love the hymns, the flavors, and the decorations; I find the incarnation the most moving element of Christianity; I love the chance to spend time with family.

However, there is one part of Christmas I dislike: the presents.

Now, I could tell some philosophically sophisticated story to justify my dislike.

  • I could argue that the ‘commercialism’ of presents trivializes the spiritual realities that we should focus on during Christmas.
  • I could argue that the whole idea of a season where you are expected to give a gift makes real gift-giving impossible. I could point out that it is much more meaningful to receive a gift merely out of thoughtful good will rather than out of thoughtful good will in light of social expectation.
  • I could argue that the gift process tends to ‘individualize’ the celebration, with each person getting things ‘for themselves.’ This is in contrast to, say, Christmas dinner where a family really does share a meal. (We ‘share’ gifts in a sense. Namely, I share a gift with you. But still each person gets their own gifts, gifts they primarily use on their own.)
  • I could argue that mutual gift giving is economically inefficient, since we are better at buying things for ourselves than for others.
  • I could argue that presents normalize a troubling dishonesty. You are expected to express joy at the gift that you receive, completely irrespective of how much you want it. It is considered impolite to be honest about how much you liked a gift.
  • I could argue that the norms surrounding giving presents creates a social pressure for people to spend money they don’t have and thus leads people into debt.

I really think each of these arguments is right, and really do believe we should stop giving presents for Christmas.

But none of these are the real reason I dislike presents. My deep dislike of presents stems from my struggles with gratitude. I find receiving presents awkward, and really struggle to appreciate what people get for me. (There are exceptions, one year my sister got me a Christmas ornament made from Plato’s Republic; it was an awesome gift and I remain extremely appreciative.)

So why do I find it awkward to receive presents?

My Struggle with Receiving Gifts

Here is my basic struggle with receiving gifts. Financially, I am perfectly well-off. So, if there is something that I think is worth the money, then I purchase it myself. If I think something is not worth the money, then I won’t purchase it for myself. But if I won’t purchase it myself, then why in the world would I want someone else to purchase it for me? The reason that I don’t want to waste money — namely that the money can be better spent on other things — applies just as much to other people.

I suspect that this is my real issue with presents because if this is my issue, then it explains why I am OK with some gifts. For example, I find it easy to appreciate gifts that someone makes or bakes for me. I can’t buy delicious homemade brownies or apple butter, so it makes total sense as a gift assuming the homemade stuff really is better than the store-bought alternative. Similarly, I find it easier to appreciate gifts when someone gives me something that I would have bought myself had I known it exists (like the Republic Christmas ornament).

The thing is, this objection only makes sense because I lack the virtue of gratitude.

The Vice of Ingratitude

To understand why, let’s consider a passage of Seneca’s On Benefits: 

A benefit cannot be touched with one’s hand; the business is carried out with one’s mind. There is a big difference between the raw material of a benefit and the benefit itself. Consequently, the benefit is not the gold, the silver, or any of the things which are thought to be most important; rather, the benefit is the intention of the giver.

. . .

So what is a benefit? It is a well-intentioned action that confers joy and in so doing derives joy, inclined towards and willingly prepared for doing what it does. And so it matters not what is done or what is given, but with what attitude, since the benefit consists not in what is done or given but rather in the intention of the giver or agent. . . . If benefits consisted in the things and not precisely in the intention of the benefactor, then the benefits would be greater to the extent that the things received are greater. But that is not the case. For often we are more obliged to the person who gave us a small gift in grand manner, who “matched the wealth of kings with his intention,” who gave little but did so freely, who ignored his own poverty while showing concern for mine, who was not just willing to help out but eager to do so, who felt like he was receiving a benefit because he was giving one, who gave as though he would later receive and received as though he had not given, who watched for, even sought out, an opportunity to serve. By contrast, as I have already said, benefits that have to be extracted from the donor or that fall carelessly from him—these benefits are not appreciated even if they seem large in bulk and in appearance . . .. What this other person gave is great; but he was hesitant, he put it off, he moaned while he was giving, he gave arrogantly, and he paraded the fact that he was giving, and did not intend to give pleasure to the recipient. He gave to his own ambition and not to me.

Seneca’s point is that, when one looks with the ‘eyes of gratitude’ it really is the ‘thought that counts.’ What the grateful person appreciates is not the actual thing given, but the good will that the gift expresses. We appreciate, not the token of love, but the love itself.

To the grateful person, the book they receive as a gift is more valuable than the same book purchased on Amazon. That is because the book acts as an outward sign of another’s good will, something much more valuable than the book itself.

The ungrateful person might appreciate a gift. But in contrast to the grateful person, they appreciate it merely for the value of the item. The ungrateful person is just as pleased at finding an abandoned book on the street as they are at being given the book by a friend or mentor.

Ingratitude as the Source of My Problem

If one values a gift merely for the item one receives, then my struggle with gifts makes perfect sense. If I’d sufficiently valued the item, I’d just buy it for myself. However, this is also a vicious way to value gifts. To value gifts merely for the item one receives, is to value gifts in an ungrateful and miserly way.

If instead, one values the gift in a grateful way — as an expression of another’s love and goodwill — then it’s impossible to purchase the gift for one’s self. Were I a more grateful person, were my attention to move naturally from the item to the other’s act of giving, then I’d not have any problem being appreciative of the gifts that I receive (so long as the gifts really do express love and good will, rather than mere social expectation to give around Christmas time).

Ingratitude, in my case, presents as an awkwardness in receiving presents. But that is not the only way it can present itself. Ungrateful people find gifts awkward when they also feel content with what they have. Because I have the items I want, and because I value gifts merely for the items that they are, I therefore struggle to value gifts people get for me.

However, ingratitude can also be present in people who focus too much on gifts. If an ungrateful person is not content with what they have, then they will value gifts. However, they will value the gift merely as the item they want, and not primarily as an expression of the other’s love and good will.

There are ways to test for this sort of ingratitude. For example, when you think about a gift, do you tend to also think about the person who gave it to you? Similarly, when you anticipate gifts do you hope for particular sorts of things? If so, that suggests that you value gifts primarily for what is given, and not the good will the gift expresses.

Conclusion

The grateful person appreciates gifts as an expression of good will. As such, grateful people care less about what they receive, and instead care more about the person who gave them the gift.

Of course, many of the norms that surround gift giving make it harder to appreciate gifts properly. For example, the expectation to give gifts for the holidays — or to give gifts to those who gave something to you — makes it harder to appreciate gifts as an expression of good will. We all know that many people buy gifts partly out of social expectation or because they know they are likely to receive a gift from us.

However, there are other ways to express love and good will beyond the giving of gifts. So while I doubt I can convince everyone to stop giving Christmas presents, perhaps I can encourage some change in our Christmas practices. Perhaps, given the various ways the gift-giving process has become corrupted, I can convince people to give fewer gifts, to spend less money, and to focus on other ways to express good will and love.

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Wrapping Christmas Presents: Some Lessons from Ancient Philosophy

photograph of presents wrapped in gold before a Christmas tree

So here’s a question: why do we spend time and effort nicely wrapping Christmas presents? Sure the surprise factor created by wrapping is cool, but there are much easier ways to conceal the present until the moment of unveiling.

Now, I’m not actually interested in the real explanation for why we wrap presents. No doubt most people wrap presents because it is traditional, or as a way to show off, or because it provided a nice excuse to procrastinate on dissertation work after an annoyingly long semester (though now that I think about it… that last one might be a bit parochial). Instead, what I want to know is whether there is anything good about wrapping gifts. I’m interested in the goodness of gift-wrap, because it is a particular instance of a more general moral question: what is the importance of outward appearance?

There is profound truth in the banal moralisms about not judging by outward appearance. Don’t judge a book by its cover! Which is to say, when dating you should care about the character of a person, not about how attractive they are. Which is to say, when hiring you should care about the quality of a person’s work and not that person’s height or weight. Which is to say, when voting you should care about the content of what a politician says and not the power of the rhetoric with which they say it. I think all of this is right. I can’t help but sound cliché when I make this point, but the point is true nonetheless: what matters is the reality on the inside, not the appearance on the outside. But if that is right, is it shallow to care how presents are wrapped? Is the beautifying of the appearance merely a sop to our vanity?

Here, I want to use some ancient philosophy to defend the wrapping of presents. I think Plato and Aristotle can help us understand the role of wrapping in our lives. Plato will help us understand what exactly outward appearances are, and Aristotle will help us understand why they might be important.

A Platonic Distinction Between Appearances and the Good

In his work The Gorgias — incidentally, my favorite work on ethics — Plato explains the nature of rhetoric by distinguishing the proper good from the apparent good. He starts with the example of food. According to Plato, there is a good proper to food — namely healthfulness — and an art proper to the good of food — namely nutrition science. Our reason, by the use of careful study, is capable of identifying which foods really are good for us. But there is also an apparent good of food, and that is the tastiness of food. We evolved to like foods that are good to eat. We like to eat what tastes good, and so we hope that what is tasty is good for us.

For Plato, when you find one food tastier than another, that itself does not make the food better. Rather, that is the food appearing better to your tongue. When I look at a Müller-Lyer illusion, the fact that one line looks longer does not make the line longer; rather the line appears longer to my eyes. The tastiness of food is an ‘outward appearance’. It is not itself a good of food, rather it is a way for the food to appear good. Sometimes that appearance is accurate (after all, our tastes did evolve so that we would like food that is good for us), but often the appearance is systematically distorted (as it seems to be in our calorically-rich, junk food laden society).

Plato points out that if you had a nutritionist and a pastry chef each cook food for children, the children would reliably think the pastry chef’s food is better. That is because the children are misled by taste, thinking the worse food is in fact the better. Plato argues that in many similar contexts we mistakenly prioritize the appearance of good over the actual good, especially when the actual good is difficult to identify. The good proper to ideas is truth. However, those skilled in rhetoric can package their ideas so that they appear true even when they are false. The good proper to soap is its ability to clean. However, most cleaning companies focus on proper perfuming so that things at least smell clean whether or not they are.

This division between the true good and the apparent good exists, according to Plato, because we are not only rational creatures but are embodied rational creatures. We don’t just have a rational nature which can recognize the good of things, we also have animalistic appetites which cannot track goodness directly and so instead perceive goodness by way of proxies.

Physical attraction is the proxy our animalistic body uses to decide who to marry, even though the correlation between physical attraction and spouse quality is weak at best. Taste is the proxy our animalistic body uses to decide what food is good to eat, even though in our environment the correlation between taste and health is often inverted.

This distinction of Plato’s is, I think, a useful way for thinking about outward appearance. The ‘inward reality’ concerns the actual good of the thing, and the outward appearance describes how that goodness appears to our appetites.

Aristotle’s Insight on the Second Good of Activity

Once you have Plato’s distinction in mind, you might think that wrapping presents is clearly vain. After all, it involves a focus on outward appearances, and even worse, a focus on outward appearances that have nothing to do with the primary good of the gift. You can make food taste better by adding salt, but at least salt is also an important nutrient to human health! If you wrap Christmas presents nicely, it does nothing to improve the actual good of the inner gift. So to understand why wrapping presents might still be valuable, we now need to turn to the insights of Aristotle.

Plato tended to be pretty harsh on our physical bodies. He, at times, wrote as though we are rational selves trapped in a physical body that, for the most part, just gets in the way. It is thus, perhaps, not surprising that he didn’t see value in our animalistic appetites seeing things as good.

Aristotle, however, had a somewhat more balanced view of the integration of body and soul. For Aristotle, it would not only be a mistake to think of ourselves as souls trapped in a body, he would not even think it possible for a soul to be trapped in a body. For Aristotle, the body and soul (or matter and form) are inextricably linked together; they don’t make sense without one another.

This led Aristotle to pay more attention to how we want to integrate our animalistic appetites with the judgment of our reason. For Aristotle, pleasure is not a mere distraction, rather it can perfect other already good activities. And it is this idea of perfecting which will help us understand why it might be good to wrap presents.

To understand Aristotle’s notion of perfection, we need to distinguish between two different goods. The first is the good object of an activity – the good object of eating is healthy food. The second is the good activity itself. Not only is food good, but it is also good to eat food. Not only is a person good, but it is also good to befriend or marry that person. Not only is an idea good (that is true), but it is also good to believe or understand that idea.

Aristotle’s central insight, then, is that the good of outward appearances does nothing for the good of the object. But it does make easier the good of the activity. And the reason it makes that activity easier is because we are not just rational souls, we are also physical bodies, and the outer appearances make it easier for our whole bodies to enter into the activity.

That food is tasty does not make the food better for you, but it certainly makes it easier to eat the food. It allows you to enter into the activity of eating more fully. Similarly, that someone is physically attractive is not a good reason to marry someone. But it is still a good thing if you find your spouse attractive, because it makes it easier to care for and love your spouse. Your animalistic appetites cooperate with, rather than fight with, your reason.

It is this role that Aristotle has in mind when he says that pleasure perfects our activities. I can pursue the good even if I don’t enjoy it, but when I enjoy what I am doing I am able to enter into the activity more fully.

Aristotle’s insight is that, as embodied creatures, the outward appearances which give rise to bodily pleasure help us enter our whole selves (and not just our rational selves) into an activity. Rhetoric can be used to mislead, as it is often used in government propaganda. But it can also be used to help people more deeply appreciate what is true (as is the case in Martin Luther King Jr.’s rhetoric in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”).

So then, the reason we wrap presents need not be a simple sop to our vanity. Rather, it can be a way to recognize that the person you are giving a gift to is not just a rational soul but a human person — someone who has not just an intellect that can tell what is good about a gift, but someone with eyes which can be drawn in by the beauty of a present. Beautifying the exterior, while it can be vain or deceptive, can also be an appropriate way to help one fully enter into and appreciate the inner good.

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State Neutrality and Public Holidays

photograph of sign at Korean Costco identifying holidays

Now that Christmas is over it is a good time to reflect on its role as an American public holiday and the role of public holidays more generally. Christmas, a holiday originating as a blend of pagan solstice festivals and a Christian celebration of Christ’s birth has become, in the United States at least, a fairly secular holiday. While claims of a War on Christmas are overblown, there certainly is a decline in religious association with the holiday. This should come as no surprise since the rate of religious participation in the United States has been declining for many years. According to Pew, among Millennials 44 percent consider Christmas more of a “cultural holiday.”

What is a “cultural holiday” and what differentiates them from ordinary holidays? According to Etymonline, the word “holiday” derives from Old English “haligdæg,” itself derived from the words “halig” and “dæg” meaning “holy” and “day” respectively. “Haligdæg” though came with the particular meaning of “holy day, consecrated day, religious anniversary; Sabbath” with the sense of “day of exemption from labor and recreation” only coming centuries later.

So, holidays originally were days of religious observance. People would stop working to engage in festivities and religious rituals. The ethics of celebrating these holidays is clear-cut. These holidays originate with the command of one’s god or gods, and the commands of the gods must be followed in obedience of the moral rule “one must obey the gods.” The moral imperative to observe so-called “cultural holidays” is less clear. Any good Christian celebrates Christmas but what justifies the celebration of Christmas for an atheist, whose ethics preclude obedience to the commands of supposed gods, or a Hindu, who worships other gods? Further still, what is the moral imperative for governments and corporations to observe these holidays and to thus give their employees a break from work at these times?

In a religiously homogeneous society, the justification for these bodies to collectively observe holidays is clear: if all their members must observe the holiday as per their shared deity’s commands, they will be unable to do anything else. But in a multicultural society, how do these bodies decide which religious holidays to observe and which to ignore? And, how do they decide what secular holidays to endorse, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Columbus day? There are important consequences to these decisions. The observance of religious holidays by secular governments and corporations may create a public perception of those religions being endorsed or recognized as true, leading to increased marginalization of religious minorities. And, there may be tension between the observance of particular religious holidays by the federal government and the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. In addition, every holiday provides benefits, in the form of free time, for people as well as costs, in the form of less economic productivity and potentially a lack of work-hours for those who need or want them.

In the United States, the government can only declare “federal holidays,” on which federal employees may not work. Unlike many other countries, there are no “national holidays” on which businesses are required to close. Thus, there end up being a vague list of “public holidays” on which many businesses will close, though many will not, and the observance of holidays is totally up to the discretion of the particular business. Furthermore, businesses may provide either paid or unpaid time off for employees on these holidays. There are ten federal holidays and six public holidays that are “universally embraced,” being endorsed by 90 percent of businesses and organizations. These are New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Among these, only Christmas is an originally religious holiday. All the others are purely cultural holidays.

What would happen if suddenly Christmas was no longer a federal holiday and if businesses and organizations stopped recognizing it? For starters, many people would be very upset. According to Gallup, 93 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas and having to work on that day would certainly be annoying. However, there is no reason to think there would be mass protests or revolution; it is just a holiday after all. But, since it is so universally popular, people would try to make do. I see two ways people could do so: first, people could simply use their own paid vacation days on Christmas and/or Christmas Eve, and, second, people could observe Christmas on the weekend in years where it falls during the week, or whenever they have a regularly scheduled day off. However, there are problems with both of these approaches that may reveal just why people would be so upset if Christmas were to cease being a recognized holiday.

Americans do not get a lot of time off. Indeed, among other advanced economies, the United States is the only one which does not have a statutory minimum amount of paid time off. Legally, it would be possible for every working American outside of the federal government to work every weekday of the year. The United Kingdom guarantees 28 days of paid time off on top of nine national holidays; France has 25 days and eleven national holidays. Even our close neighbors Canada and Mexico beat us with 10 and 6 days guaranteed off and 9 and 7 national holidays, respectively. Few people could afford to use one of their precious few vacation days on Christmas, and many people do not even have paid time off that they could use to avoid working on Christmas. People’s rallying around these few public holidays has its source in this troubling lack of labor rights.

On the other hand, celebrating Christmas on a day other than December 25th would be an acknowledgment of the total secularization of the holiday. Those who complain about the supposed “War on Christmas” would have new ammunition. And, in reality, many people do consider Christmas a religious holiday. Those who would reject such moves to turn Christmas into a floating holiday like Thanksgiving would have to defend why only Christmas gets to be designated a public holiday, and thus why only Christianity gets a public holiday. Those who presently work on Eid or Diwali or Yom Kippur while devoutly following the corresponding non-Christian religion would have to be given good reason why only Christians get to have a holiday that does not count against their total paid time off.

The consideration of the idea that governments and businesses must observe Christmas thus reveals a number of problems including the limited labor rights in the United States and the problems of recognizing only one religion’s holidays. While any individual certainly has the right to celebrate whatever holidays he wishes in his free time, and no government or corporation tries to prevent this, there are a number of moral problems with the public endorsement of holidays. Holidays allow businesses to pacify their employees without guaranteeing them as much paid time off as do businesses in other nations. And, the fact that only certain religious holidays are publicly endorsed shows how Christianity-centric American society is, callous to those who follow Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and other religions with holidays of their own.

Everyone likes to be able to stay home and get paid to do so. Few would complain to get paid time off on every religious holiday that exists. But as such a world would probably have no working days at all, it is hardly realistic. So long as there exist public holidays such as Christmas which preference one religion over all others in a society as multicultural as the United States there will be unjust inequity. So long as American workers depend on whatever holidays they can get just to have any paid time off, there will be oppression and control of people by corporations. People like Christmas; they would be a lot more miserable if they had to work on December 25th. But, it is important to consider why people depend so much on having holidays off and how people following other religions are left behind when only Christmas is such a widely endorsed religious public holiday.

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Christmas Music and Emotional Manipulation

blurry photograph of decorated Christmas trees

There is a predictable pattern of reactions to Christmas music every year. First, stores start to play it much too early – typically right after Thanksgiving, or maybe even right after Halloween – and people comment on how stores are playing it much too early. Then there’s that sweet spot, where for a few weeks the songs are fun and comforting to listen to, and Wham’s “Last Christmas” is still tolerable. Inevitably, though, patience starts to run out as holiday stresses mount, and by the time the season’s over pretty much everyone is ready for another 10-month break from Christmas music.

There is, however, one class of song that is particularly difficult to tolerate no matter what time in December: the preachy Christmas song that doesn’t celebrate the spirit of giving so much as it seems to chastise you for having been a terrible person all year long. Two such songs stand out: John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” (that’s the one with the “War is over/If you want it” chorus) and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (that’s the one with the “Feed the world/let them know it’s Christmastime again” chorus).

While both songs come from a place of good intentions – Lennon’s song was written partly in protest against the Vietnam War, while Band Aid were attempting to help raise awareness for a famine in Ethiopia in the early-to-mid 1980s – I doubt they make many people’s holiday party playlists. And for good reason: I don’t want to feel bad about myself during the holidays. And although I didn’t really do anything this past year to try to put an end to war or famine, do I really have to be reminded about my many moral failings?

If you think that I’m being too hard on these types of songs, then you should know that I’m not alone. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has been criticized repeatedly, for many different reasons. Perhaps most damning of all is its ill-informed message about what was happening in “Africa” at the time. Consider, for example, the following lyrics, which describe Africa as a place:

Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

While undeniably schmaltzy, it’s also bizarre to talk about all of Africa in a single breath. As Bim Adewunmi at The Guardian writes:

“There is a humourless danger in taking song lyrics too literally, but I can’t help it: yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in Africa because huge swaths of that vast continent are Christian; the greatest gift anyone can have is life; and actually, it is more likely to be water, not just “bitter tears”, flowing across Africa’s 54 nations.”

Adewunmi also argues that the song perpetuates a narrative in which the people of Africa need to be “saved” by those in the west, and ignore the efforts of those actually living in countries affected by some of the problems that “super groups” like Band Aid are meant to draw attention to.

So not only is it emotionally manipulative, but it’s patronizing as well. Is there any good reason to keep playing this song around Christmas?

Well, perhaps there’s one: the song and subsequent concerts put on by related act Live Aid have raised a good quantity of money for charity. Although the original Band Aid song was released in 1984, subsequent re-releases – including Band Aid II in 1989, Band Aid 20 in 2004, and Band Aid 30 in 2014, with updated rosters of contemporary popular musicians – donated a portion of profits from sales of the single each time to various charities in Africa, approximately £40m worth – although there has been debate about the overall benefits or detriments of the original Live Aid efforts, with some arguing that unforeseen political consequences of Live Aid’s donations may have caused a significant amount of harm, as well.

Whether the consequences were overall positive or negative, we can also ask the more theoretical question of whether it is appropriate to solicit charitable donations by means of emotional manipulation. Clearly the song is meant to make the listener question their relative position of privilege – especially when they are told to “thank God” it’s “them” instead of you who are suffering. We might then be motivated to donate to the Band Aid cause not out of legitimate concern for the suffering of others, but instead to assuage our own guilt. We might worry, though, that while it’s overall a good thing to donate to charity, one should be motivated by actually helping others, and not just to try to feel less bad about oneself.

That being said, if it does indeed help distribute some of the wealth and goods from those who have a lot to those who need it, it is hard to see how a little emotional manipulation in the form of cheesy Christmas songs could hurt. And while it might be close to another year before you hear “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” again, next time you do it’s worth thinking about the best way to assuage that year-end guilt.

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Should Parents Lie to Their Children About Santa Claus?

photograph of Santa Claus ornament on tree

As the parent of an inquisitive 2½ year old, I currently find myself fumbling to explain Santa Claus to him, of whom he is now quite aware. Should I emphasize that he is a storybook character and not a real person? Would he even know what the difference between real and make-believe is yet? Ultimately, I find myself confronted by the perennial parenting question that divides many a household: Should we lie to our kids about Santa Claus?

My own parents always dutifully marked some Christmas presents as if they were from Santa Claus, even well after we kids were past the stage of believing in that jolly old elf. I do not personally feel damaged by my parents sustaining the myth of Father Christmas, but a recent essay in Lancet Psychiatry warns otherwise. Kathy McKay, a clinical psychologist at the University of New England, Australia and co-author claims: “The Santa myth is such an involved lie, such a long-lasting one, between parents and children, that if a relationship is vulnerable, this may be the final straw. If parents can lie so convincingly and over such a long time, what else can they lie about?”

Continue reading “Should Parents Lie to Their Children About Santa Claus?”

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Zombie Nativity Scene

A Cincinnati, Ohio suburb is fighting over a zombie themed nativity scene at a private residence. Jasen Dixon and his family operate a haunted house for Halloween, and used some of their zombie decorations to create a unique nativity scene in their front yard for the second year in a row.

Last year, the family was in hot water with township officials for not having the proper permits for the large manger. This year, the Dixon’s applied for a permit, but their appeal was rejected and they have incurred fines from the township as a result. The Dixon’s realized that by deconstructing the roof of the manger, the scene would no longer qualify as a building and they avoid further fines. Although the fines have stopped, the criticism has not.

Religious groups have left numerous notes at the scene, saying that the zombie depiction is disrespectful to God. One note claims “God frowns upon the manger scene”. However, the Dixon’s send their son to Catholic school and defend against claims that they are anti-Christian.

Jasen Dixon sees the display as harmless, saying “We use this for our family craft time”. The Dixon’s created a Facebook page for their scene and has gained many fans. The page has received many messages of support from fans in the Cincinnati area and worldwide. One commenter states, “I don’t personally like it but it’s a free country and for that, I support this family’s expression of freedom!” and many other posts mirror this sentiment. Some humorously share references to The Walking Dead and others say the display would be more appropriate at Halloween, or even Easter (when Jesus rose from the dead). The Dixon’s are also collecting donations for various causes including offsetting the fines that they incurred, building a bigger and better scene next year, and sending money to local charities.