Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not!

Nietzsche, late nineteenth-century European philosopher, theorized that the weak seek to beguile the strong by pressuring the latter to be ashamed of being strong, which includes being self-confident rather than resentful. Whereas the strong designate the weak merely as bad, the weak, who resort even to cruelty as a desperate means of feeling the pleasure of power, the weak label the strong as evil. The asymmetry here leaps off the page! Such seething loathing of the strong is itself an indication of the deplorable weak constitution of the weak, especially those who are too weak to master their intractable urge to dominate. The strong are strong enough to master their most intractable instinctual urge, so any resentment toward the herd animals is mastered such that they are merely bad, rather than evil. With such internal mastery, the strong can bathe in their self-confidence, out of which generosity naturally flows. Even in regarding the resentful weak as merely bad rather than as evil, the strong can be viewed as being generous, for the attitude of the weak toward the strong is indeed sordid and even toxic. Therefore, Nietzsche suggests that the strong maintain a pathos of distance, which can be interpreted both as social distance and emotional distance, from the ill herd lest the strong too become sick. The shift to “happy holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas” had by 2024 become so ubiquitous in public without any official mandate that a herd mentality can be inferred.

It is not enough for the resentful weak to refuse to celebrate a national holiday, such as Christmas or even Thanksgiving (who doesn’t like food?); the weak who seek to dominate the strong, in spite of the obvious point of being weaker both in terms of external and inner power, actively attempt to beguile the strong into being ashamed even for saying the word Christmas in public! The American retail sector has been acting as an enabler for the weak by tacitly refusing to recognize Christmas even though stores are almost all closed on Christmas Day. The retail executives and middle managers who espouse passive-aggression by directing employees not to say, “Merry Christmas” even on the day before Christmas; instead, customers buying Christmas presents are accosted with the inherently passive aggressive, “Enjoy your holiday” as a looping recording blasted out throughout the store, “This holiday, . . .” A national holiday is by definition not your holiday, as the holiday is officially recognized within the territory of the nation.

As if turning on a dime, every year on December 26^th, public discourse suddenly reverts back to being able to say the name of the next holiday, New Year’s Day, without any hint of the previous month of “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday.” Making this switch it itself a passive aggressive slap on Santa’s rosy cheeks. As an experiment one year, I turned to “Enjoy your holiday” after Christmas whenever a stranger (including retail employees!) said, “Happy New Year.” More than once, the other person was offended. Imagine if I were to say, “Enjoy your holiday,” to a Black American on Martin Luther King Day in January. Naturally, the person would take offense, as the explicit implication would be that the holiday is only valid for Black people even though it is a national holiday. Were I to apply the phrase to July 4^th, which is Independence Day in the U.S., I would be implying that I am against that nation. Were I to say, “Enjoy your holiday” on Thanksgiving and even go so far in passive aggression to insist that the holiday be called a day of mourning (even though the holiday is based on a peaceful feast in 1620 attended both by American Indians and European settlers in Massachusetts), my resentment would (or should) be quite evident to other people. Were I to inform people in public places, including stores, not only that they cannot say Thanksgiving, but also that they must refer to the holiday as the Day of Mourning, the hearers could legitimately call me out for not only stubbornly refusing to admit that Thanksgiving is a national holiday, but also imposing my own ideology as if everyone else must speak in line with it. One year at a “Holiday Party” at my alma mater, Yale, an employee replied to me, “We can’t say that,” after I had quietly observed that it was really a Christmas party. We can’t? Was a law passed in Connecticut prohibiting people from using the words, “Christmas Party” even at a private university? It is precisely the default of can’t as if its pronouncement were a jurisprudential fact of reason that I wish to expose and eviscerate as not only sordid, but enabling too.

There is a qualitative difference between personal and public holidays. To unilaterally, whether as an individual of a member of a group, implicitly castigate people even for saying the name of a public holiday as if it were a personal holiday, whether of an individual (e.g., a birthday) or a group (e.g., the Solstices, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Hanukkah, Devali, and Quanza) is to conflate two different categories. In fact, a third category exists: holidays that are not official national holidays and yet are not limited to a group and thus are de facto (rather than de jure) public in nature (e.g., Halloween and Valentine’s Day, and perhaps St. Patrick’s Day, as drinking green beer is hardly limited to Americans under 40 of Irish ancestry). Were there no difference between private and national (and even de facto public) holidays, then governments would hardly go to the trouble of proclaiming national holidays, which of course are explicitly valid officially valid throughout a country. I turn now to some implications.  

Firstly, that everyone does not celebrate a national (or de facto public) holiday does not nullify that holiday. In fact, it is ridiculous for a person to claim that because one does not like or do anything on a given national holiday, it is therefore not really even a legal holiday. 

Secondly, that a number of private, group-only holidays occur in the same month as a national (and even a public) holiday does not mean that people should not refer in public to the national holiday by name. In the U.S., there is only one national (and public) holiday in the month of December; Americans don’t say “happy holidays” leading up to Halloween even though Veterans Day is not far behind in November.

Thirdly, the fact that a group relishes a certain national (or otherwise public) holiday does not render that holiday only private, and thus devoid of any broader meaning or significance. If the group is religious in nature, this does not necessarily mean that the public holiday is religious. For other religious groups to stubbornly suppose so in utter resentment and jealousy ignores the separation of “church and state” in the U.S. Constitution, which bars Congress from establishing a religion and thus proclaiming a religious interpretation or origin of a public holiday. A secular holiday can be proclaimed as such and thus clear the bar of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution even if a religious group celebrates the holiday in a non-secular way and even if the holiday itself had a distinctly religious origin. Halloween, for example, which admittedly is not a U.S. national holiday but it generally observed nonetheless (rather than being a group holiday) had by the twenty-first century become almost completely secular in America even though it is on the eve of All Saints Day in Christianity. The latter does not negate or nullify the secular holiday of Halloween; children need not accept the Nicene Creed in order to put on costumes and go trick-or-treating for candy. As for Christmas, the distinctly Christian feast of it is not theologically significant as neither the Incarnation or the Resurrection are celebrated on December 25th, for the Incarnation is celebrated on March 25^th—nine months before December 25^th, and the Resurrection is celebrated on Easter in March or April. It is a blunder, therefore, to assume not only that there is no secular holiday (e.g., gift-giving, Santa, and even Frosty the Snowman), but also that that even the religious holiday marks anything distinctly theological (qua  supernatural)!  Jealousy and resentment can indeed be blinding, or at the very least have a distorting effect on a person’s emotions, cognitions and perception.

For an advocate of a group-limited private holiday not only to refuse to admit that a public holiday is such a holiday, but also to insist that other people cannot acknowledge and even say the name of such a holiday in public simply goes too far. Resentful selfishness that resorts to passive aggression is indeed evil, for to insist that other people abide by a social reality that is a projection of the selfish self denies that none of us are deities. That is, self-love over love directed to God is the root sin behind the over-reach here. To counter such evil, I recommend that people in the U.S. say “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday” for every holiday except Christmas, even to retail clerks. Even though most people might be confused, others—the more insightful—will get the passive-aggressive message that it is unfair to single out a certain national holiday as non grata and even as forbidden in public discourse. The main point is of course that passive aggression should be rendered transparent so that its beguiling and hateful spite can be weakened, as befitting the weak who tacitly, yet intentionally nonetheless, weaponize the phenomenon of holidays.

That the American retail sector enables this weaponization renders companies as de facto accomplices, and thus hardly as neutral parties. To the extent that American culture reflects the retail culture, including its nomenclature and mannerisms, the responsibility of business not to perpetuate and enforce a specific passive-aggressive ideology whose source is exogenous to business is all the greater. By interiorizing such an ideology, a store (i.e., its employees, including store managers) becomes passive aggressive and thus deserves push-back from resentful customers. The irony is that the store managers and even their executives at company headquarters intend precisely to avoid offending customers. Including the name of all national holidays, rather than substituting this holiday or happy holidays for one such holiday both in the stores and in advertisements, is a legitimate and fair alternative marketing (retail) strategy. That some customers might be offended just by the name of a specific public holiday is no reason for the dog to be led by its tail. Being led by oversensitive ideologically-driven customers is not socially responsible, as it is not fair to all of the strong, self-confident customers who are willing to generously spend in the midst of celebrating a national holiday. For a national, public holiday is a statement that a certain holiday is legitimate and thus valid in a country, even though not every resident necessarily does anything to mark the holiday and some residents, even citizens, may be personally opposed. To be sure, the latter have a protected political right to oppose something based on an ideology, but they do not have the authority to impose that ideology to limit the free speech of other people, not to mention to unilaterally cancel a national holiday. Such a holiday is valid whether its opponents like it or not, and the latter do not have the right to cancel the free-speech of other people who wish to specify even just the specific name of such a holiday. Arrogance looking down on the rest of us from the stilts of false-entitlement is indeed unbecoming of anyone. 

Climate Seasons and Astronomy Confused: A Societal Blind-Spot

In the Northern Hemisphere, in the Northern E.U. and U.S., it is ludicrous to claim that winter begins not until December 21^st. If we go by the claim, the Christmas season is in the fall—joined by Halloween (and Thanksgiving in the U.S.). Similarly, September sports autumn cooling off rather than three more weeks of summer. In many areas, leaves turn fall colors well before September 21^st. As a matter of fact, “Climate scientists define summer as the three months from June 1 through August 31^st.”[1] Why, then, do meteorologists on television, at least in the U.S.—that vaunted superpower—announce that fall officially begins on September 21^st. They even show “fall begins” on the day of the 21^st on the week of weather. Similar, the fools show “winter begins” just four days before Christmas, on the winter solstice. That solstice is in the winter—not the beginning of it.

Just for added confusion, astronomers use the names of the meteorological seasons for the four quarters of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. These quarters are loosely related to the climatic seasons. The “winter” quarter begins on December 21^st, the “winter” solstice, when the perpendicular rays of the sun hit their most southern “line” on the Earth; the “summer” solstice, well into summer on June 21^st, occurs when the perpendicular rays are furthest north in the Northern Hemisphere. On September and March 21^st, the perpendicular rays fall on the Earth’s equator. The solstices are thus associated with daylight extremes, whereas the equinae suggest balanced day and night.

In short, to conflate meteorology and astronomy is a logical error, which is bound to lead to errors and confusion. It surpasses comprehension why weather folks on television apparently do not know that climatically winter in the Northern Hemisphere is in December, January, and February; spring comprises March, April, and May; summer runs from June through the end of August, and fall’s months are September, October, and November. At the very least, the weather “personalities” should be familiar with weather recording. It makes absolutely sense to announce on, say, September 10^th that the previous summer had overnight lows much above average, and then say on September 21^st that fall has begun. Such a “feat” contorts human nature itself, and yet the blind-spot has unfortunately endured.

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1. Doyle Rice, “Can’t Sleep on It: Nights Are Hottest on Record,” USA Today, September 7, 2018.

Getting the Seasons Officially Wrong: A Case of a Category-Mistake

Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post has not quite turned the corner with respect to spring, and the seasons in general. You see, “season” is used in two distinct though related ways in English. It can refer to four distinct weather/plant-life conditions or to the four parts of the earth’s orbit around the sun. Given the tilt of the Earth, the two are related but they do not occur together. While Achenbach acknowledges that the vernal equinox typically on March 21^st “is a moment of time specified by the motion of the Earth around the sun,” he refers to this as the official start of the meteorological spring. In actuality it is not. In the Northern Hemisphere, meteorologists record data from December, January and February as winter and March, April and May as spring. So in March 2012, meteorologists could already conclude that the preceding winter had been the fourth warmest since the record-keeping began.

Consider the insanity in claiming on December 19^th in the Northeast, the Northern Midwest, or on the Northern plains or further west that it is still fall. Yet even television weather people make the mistake of representing the winter solstice—the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere—as meteorological and botanical rather than astronomical in nature (to say nothing of the sheer stupidity in ignoring the obvious winter conditions of snow and ice). Meanwhile, still other people render the astronomical event as religious in nature. The ascendancy of the evergreen on the longest night is religious for those people even as it is botanical to others.

For my purposes here, it is sufficient to note that astronomy is distinct from  meteorology and botany. The latter two are relatively coincident as phenomena. To make meteorology and botany wait on an astronomical mark conflates different categories that do not cohere. It is not surprising that such thinking results in some rather obvious mistakes.

I argue that the same sort of cognitive flaw takes place in comparing a state in one empire-scale union (e.g., France) with another entire empire-scale union (e.g., the U.S.). The respective unions’ states are equivalent both in scale and politically in being semi-sovereign. Citizens in California could just as well say, “In California we do X (that really could be just about anything), while in the E.U. you do Y.” This statement seems strange on both sides of the pond, yet no one bats an eyelid at: “In the Netherlands we do X, while in the U.S. you do Y.” The asymmetry is based on European states’ rights (i.e., the antifederalist movement in American terms) and (frankly) American ignorance at America’s expense. So too, there is ignorance in a meteorologist announcing changes in the weather seasons based on astronomical bench-marks in the Earth’s orbit even as meteorologists do not use those bench-marks in recording data.

I suppose it is in reaction to the meteorologists’ inexcusable carelessness in conflating meteorology and astronomy (they are meteorologists, after all) that I note the beginning of a season by the actual shift in weather conditions. That is, I go from the empirical conditions on the ground. March of 2012 was warm even for spring across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. A day or two into the warmth, I naturally started referring spring having arrived. Sure, winter could have returned and then it would have been winter for those days, so the seasons can refer to particular weather conditions (being meteorological). Yet the seasons can also refer to more long-standing clusters of botanical/meteorological conditions. In that March, as soon as the flowers and buds were visible, that only added to my determination to say to folks, “Well, spring has arrived”—meaning on a more long-standing basis than just a warm spell. No one even put up a fight—even as the weather folks on television were still marveling that spring was still weeks away. They just made themselves out to be stubborn idiots, frankly. When they finally “celebrated” the arrival of the astronomical event of there being no tilt in the Earth’s relationship to the sun as if the event were meteorological, the weather “personalities” resembled people who get to a party hours late and announce that the party has officially begun. People at the party obviously know it has been going on for hours, and naturally look confused and ask the host, “who invited those idiots.”  Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any good to talk to a television set; the talking heads keep right on going, completely sure of themselves.

In March of 2012 in many of the northern republics of the U.S., it would have been crazy not to refer to the conditions on the ground, which included daffodils and even tulips flowering and bushes and even trees budding, as spring. Insisting that weeks in the 70s and even 80s are still winter just points to the fault in using the names of the weather/plant seasons to refer to the astronomical quadrants of the Earth’s orbit. There is no “spring” in outer space. If anything, it is a perpetual winter, though even this analogy fails. Furthermore, spring arrives at different times in North America, depending on how far north one happens to be. It really is a regional affair.

The standardization of record-keeping (e.g., spring as March, April and May) is entirely reasonable, but the category mistake with astronomy goes too far, cognitively/logically as well as empirically. Sticking to such a mistake even while making such obvious blunders (such as that 80 degrees with flowers blooming is still winter, or 25 degrees with snow is still fall) is a strange choice that suggests a certain mentality, given that the weather person could simply stay mum on the issue rather than say something that can easily be anticipated as looking stupid. Why even announce that it is still winter while standing outside in shorts among flowers? Why go to the trouble of announcing a category mistake as if it were valid? I suspect that part of the answer is an over-valuing on things being official. Besides the artificiality in such hypertrophy, the mentality involves the flaw of denial. “It doesn’t matter whether it is pouring outside, if there is no rain in my gauge it is not raining.” In a way, this is a version of lying. Refusing to admit an empirical observation on account of an ideological value one holds (excessively), one is willing to lie.

It is not as if the meteorological and astronomical change together. At the very least, the distinctly astronomical nature of the vernal equinox in March (when the earth has no tilt relative to the sun—which happens also at the equinox in September) should be specified rather than implying that the matter is meteorological in nature. Even though the days are getting longer in March (an astronomical matter), it takes time for the air to warm. Accordingly, the meteorological and botanical are not coincident with the astronomical. Treating an astronomical event as if it were meteorological is thus an error; it is at the very least misleading. To willingly mislead just to be official is the sordid mentality that perpetuates this ongoing category mistake.

Source:

Joel Achenbach, “A Warm, and Official, Embrace of Spring,” The Washington Post, March 20, 2012.