“Much of the best music the world has ever produced is in some way Christian, yet at Christmas time they go out of their way to showcase the worst. It’s the spiritual equivalent of McDonalds bringing the McRib back every year for a limited time. If the baby Jesus were alive today, he’d demand earplugs along with his myrrh.”

When I was young and stupid, I hated Christmas for reasons that made me very angry; now that I am older and wiser, I hate Christmas for reasons that make me sad.

Forget the need for separation of church and state, forget the fact that the “Christmas season” stretches out to two months: the real reason Christmas is hateful and loathsome is because it showcases the very worst of Christianity. It’s like a listicle of Christianity’s most embarrassing moments.

I mean, have you heard the music?

Over the last 2,000 years, Christianity has been central to the development of most of the great music in the western cannon. From the plain chant of monks to the masses of Bach, from Mozart’s requiem to freedom songs, from polyphony to gospel — the depth and breadth of the musical output of Christianity has surely been one of its great contributions to the well-being of mankind.

Yet what do they pump the malls and elevators full of to celebrate the birth of their savior? “Frosty the Snowman.”

They choose “Jingle Bells” over the anthems of Thomas Tallis. “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” instead of American shape note singing. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (as if anyone didn’t know) instead of Hank Williams or the Stanley Brothers.

Much of the best music the world has ever produced is in some way Christian, yet at Christmas time they go out of their way to showcase the worst. It’s the spiritual equivalent of McDonalds bringing the McRib back every year for a limited time. If the baby Jesus were alive today, he’d demand earplugs along with his myrrh.

Okay, sure, much of the terrible Christmas music we’re now force-fed like detainees at a very festive CIA black site is sorta-kinda more secular, and so therefore ought to be more appealing to those who object to having a religious holiday crammed down their ear holes. But I’d take a profound messiah over a half-assed shopping gimmick any day. I’d rather be exposed to two months of transcendently great religious art than a single week of noxious shopping gimmicks dressed up in Santa drag.

And speaking of Santa: since Christianity can also count some of the greatest visual art in the world as among its treasures, there is absolutely no reason for the birth of Christ to be represented by figures who look like they were violently kidnapped from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. We in the modern world think religious art has to be treacly and awful because that’s what the religious holidays we’re exposed to keep pushing. This is a contemporary delusion about religion that is religion’s own fault.

Christians: raise your standards. Are you familiar with the Early Flemish Primitives? These painters created eye-popping masterpieces about the baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary. So did the masters of the Renaissance like Raphael Santi and Leonardo Da Vinci. In fact, pretty much all of the great works of Western art were explicitly Christian up until the modern era. All of these images are also available for free on the Internet. So why do you insist on decorating your halls with holiday clip art from the Dollar Store?

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