By Alec DavisThe Daily Northwestern
I don’t have to go out on a limb to say that winter in Chicago sucks. The Windy City is great for giving a cool summer breeze, but since we’re lucky enough to occupy this lovely lakeside campus for every season except summer, most of us are only familiar with that biting, freezing wind that whips off the lake all winter and makes you wonder why you were so enchanted by the lake when you first visited. And if we’re lucky, it snows. But more often than not, it’s just cold. Winter is hell.
So why are we always so excited for it to come around? Fall comes to a close and everyone gets so excited for the first snowfall. Don’t they see the irony? We’ll all be sick of it in two weeks, but still we can’t wait for it to come. Why? The answer is more than 2,000 years old. Jesus.
It’s his birthday! Yes, everyone loves Christmas. (Or the holiday season, but since I don’t have to be PC in this column, I’ll just be honest and say Christmas. Hanukkah’s great and all, but come on, really.)
We love not only Christmas itself, but the season, as well. The lights, the decorations, the gifts, the freakin’ Christmas cheer. It’s so gosh darn wonderful. Christmas makes us want to be alive. (Christmas, as well as a little bender a week later.) But come January, it’s a long, deep descent into depression.
So let’s put two and two together and do the logical thing: Let’s move Christmas. If Christmas fell in late February, we would then only have a couple more weeks of winter left, max, depending on what Punxsutawney Phil sees. It would be great. We would have a couple months of the Christmas spirit, and I wouldn’t have to spend my Thanksgiving Break putting up the damn Christmas lights.
Instead of moping around all winter, we could revel in the Christmas spirit and anticipate all those great gifts we’re going to get. Even the gray skies and freezing temperatures can’t dampen the Christmas spirit.
Sure, there might be a couple of naysayers; there always are. Some people might protest the changing of the big J.C.’s birthday. But I’ve got two things to say to them. First off, very few people will care about it anyway. We all bemoan the secularization of Christmas, but the truth is that most people are more excited to open a package of socks from grandma than to get dressed and go to Christmas Mass. (That is, if they go at all.) It’s sad but true.
Secondly, who actually knows when Jesus was born anyway? That was more than 2,000 years ago, and we’d be lucky if we’re getting the year right, let alone the actual day. When we switched calendars in 1582, the day after Oct. 4 was Oct 15. Bam! Just like that, 10 days of history gone! History is historically inaccurate.
It’s a cold, tough world out there. How about we make things a little easier and give ourselves a joyous reason to live through the winter.
McCormick senior Alec Davis can be reached at [email protected].
