The Luv Doc: Too Much Christmas

Dear Luv Doc,
First off, let me say I love Christmas. It is my favorite time of year, but the decorating has gone insane. My husband is the worst. He is in competition with our neighbors. Every year it gets worse. This year he started right after Halloween and covered the entire house in multi-colored lights and lawn reindeer. I used to not care as long as he didn’t ask me to help put them up, but really this has gotten out of hand. How much is too much?
– Blinded by the Lights

I’m no theologian, Blinded, but I am pretty sure if Jesus were alive today, he would want us to celebrate his birthday by running obscene amounts of Christmas lights all year ‘round. Yes, the energy use would be prolific. We might go through the rest of our oil supply in record time, but I think He would be happy with us torching anything in the fossil record pre-dating 10,000 years – if only so Texas Republicans won’t look like such assholes for trying to put creationism into textbooks – especially now that our shaggy-haired peacenik Pope has declared a Catholic fatwa on all of the really egregious forms of dumbassery.

Give His Holiness some credit, classic Christianity is becoming a really tough sell these days what with iPhones, chromosome mapping, and LED bulbs. Science is kicking religion’s ass. Guess who doesn’t invent shit? Creationists. Other than some really ingenious chastity belts, the bulk of their résumé is oppressing the poor, slaughtering indigenous peoples, and burning witches.

Christians used to be able to do that shit with impunity back in the day – just throw a cross-embroidered robe and start hacking off heads with broadswords, stealing gold, and raping and pillaging. In modern times you can’t be that overt. If the Roman Catholic Church and the Koch brothers have taught us anything, it’s that true, lasting oppression really only works if you have a really good PR campaign. You have to make the rat want to eat the poison.

So I guess what I’m saying is … your husband is doing the work of the Lord. If we’re going to put ourselves on the fast track to the apocalypse, it should be for really fucking stupid reasons. We need to earn it: mindless consumerism, squandering of resources, and just general pig-headed idiocy. If the Bible is God’s word, we don’t want to fuck up His dramatic ending by insisting on tasteful, minimalist Christmas decorations, do we? I say we stick with the script. The irony is genius.