In the continuing War on Christmas, a report from New Zealand:
Drunken Santas run riot in Auckland
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus outfits, many of them drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses, police said Sunday.
The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy," began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokesman Noreen Hegarty.
These "merry gentlemen" are only trying to restore the true celebrations of the season, long since scoured from the holiday:
At other times of the year it was the poor who owed goods, labor, and deference to the rich. But on this occasion the tables were turned--literally. The poor--most often boys and young men--claimed the right to march to the houses of the well-to-do, enter their halls, and receive gifts of food, drink, and sometimes money as well. And the rich had to let them in--esentially, to hold "open house". Christmas was a time when peasants, servants, and apprentices exercised the right to demand that their wealthier neighbors and patron treat them as if they were wealthy and powerful. The Lord of the Manor let the peasants in and feasted them. In return, the peasants offered something of true value in a paternalistic society--their goodwill...
(Excerpt from The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum)
I fully expect to see more celebrations like these in future years, as those of European ancestry, tiring of the trite and sanitized modern conventions that were established by the prudish burghers and shopkeepers to protect their major interests, will carry out with great vigor.
So release your gangs of children into the nearest gated community, with their populations of Hannity and O'Reillyites. Send your older offspring of drinking age, to wassail and demand their "drams" of Johnnie Walker Blue and whatnot:
Come, butler, draw us a bowl of the best / hen we hope your soul in heaven shall rest / But if you draw us a bowl of the small / Then down will come butler, bowl and all
(Excerpt from The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum)
Draw up your battle plans, like Gerd von Rundstedt and execute like Jochen Peiper, for you own very special Wacht am Christmas blitzkeig in a "Bulge" of prosperity near you. A last ditch attempt to turn the tides against the enemy, the three month commercialized holiday season!
Stille Nacht, my ass, long live the Wassailkorps, 1st Belnicklesjugend Division!
Again, fully expect to see an explosion of this behavior in the coming years, as the divide between the landed gentry and the rest will widen and deepen. Old conventions, to preserve "civilization" and society, will return.
Isn't this what the neocon Republicans want, a return to the "good old days"?
They really don't know what they are asking for, do they?
They will receive theirs, in full measure, in winter holiday seasons to come...