Christmas has evolved a great deal over the centuries. It gone from being a sacred holiday to a secular vacation to a political football. What is the next logical step? Perhaps what we might call a winter Halloween. Halloween has long been a time for satirizing popular culture, but one New York couple has decided to move that Halloween custom to Christmas by decking their halls with a Serial Killer Santa, all in the name of decrying the commercialization of the holiday.
"Joel Krupnik and Mildred Castellanos decked the front of their Manhattan mansion this year with a scene that includes a knife-wielding 5-foot-tall St. Nick and a tree full of decapitated Barbie dolls. Hidden partly behind a tree, the merry old elf grasps a disembodied doll’s head with fake blood streaming from its eye sockets.
"In a telephone interview Wednesday, Krupnik explained that his family thought it would be a fun way to make a comment about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.
"’It is a religious holiday, but they have turned it into a business. And it shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘We didn’t put it up to offend anybody. It was just something that came out of our imagination.’
[…]
"Walter Garofalo, a musician from Brooklyn who wandered by wearing a black bandanna covered in skulls, was awe-struck.
"’I wonder if these people would let me use this as our next album cover,’ he said. ‘It’s perfect!’"
I can the album now. Coming soon to a music store near you: "The Silence of the Elves."
That does it. I’ve had about enough of the cultural Christmas spirit for one year, thank you very much.
The people who set up that display were on Fox News the other morning. They said that they don’t celebrate Christmas, so I find it hard to believe that they’re concerned with it being commercialized. It was hard to tell because they really couldn’t articulate a reason why they put this up. I was wondering if they might be JWs or something.
They also said: “We didn’t put it up to offend anybody.” Right. And the New England Patriots didn’t intend to win the last Super Bowl.
I am pretty sure they aren’t JW’s. Halloween should have been the give-away. In most situations consider whether or not a Puritan would take the action. If the answer is “no” it probably wasn’t a JW. They have there own faults, but its better to show up those faults rather than ones ascribed by ignorance.
Funny you should mention Puritans, since they outlawed Christmas outright.
A 64-year old ‘former’-Marine attacked it.
“A former Marine took a stab at saving the Christmas spirit yesterday — knocking over a bloody, knife-wielding Santa that was part of a controversial display outside a Manhattan home.
Julius Spohn, 64, of Newark, said he had read about the display in The Post and wanted to see the macabre scene in front of the East 18th Street brownstone belonging to Joel Krupnik and Mildred Castellanos.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nypost/20051219/lo_nypost/slammingstick