Holiday Entertainment

By Cathy of Alex

A(mannered ) Cranky Cathy post! Mannered because Mitchell will not have it any other way!

It’s not even Advent yet and the Christmas music is already playing 24/7 on, at least one, local radio station. Another station will start the 24/7 music this week. I know, because the start of the Christmas music on these two stations was worthy enough to warrant several brief newspaper stories in the Pioneer Press

Retailers, already anticipating a dismal shopping season, have started Black Friday a week early.

Sadly, for marketers, Christmas is always December 25th. Yet, I’m sure if there were a way to move the date to maximize sales, they would.

Ads for holiday entertainment have been popping up for about a month now. The day I buy tickets for a Trans-Siberian Orchestra show, please question my sanity. Thank you.

I know Mitchell thinks you can never have enough Menotti and he’s probably eagerly looking forward to listening to Amahl and the Night Visitors again! I know he and Judith are already watching their Christmas Special DVD collection! They told me. God bless them.

There’s nothing wrong with quality and inspiring Christmas entertainment. I admit, openly, that “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee is a song I never get tired of hearing. I’ve seen the “Nutcracker” staged numerous times and love it. I enjoy the Guthrie’s “A Christmas Carol”. “Black Nativity” staged by the Penumbra is very good as well.

But, I open up the Pioneer Press today (I’m old school. I read the print paper daily.) and the front page of the A&E Live section is entirely devoted to those dopey dinner theater “nun” shows.Every Christmas these shows that mock Catholicism, Catholic school education and nuns pop up. Someone must be going to them because a few of them are on version or part two or higher. I’m sure a local drag queen will have his local holiday show as well. In that show, he usually mocks Catholic religious songs like “Ave Maria”. I must have a heart of stone and a complete lack of humor to think this stuff isn’t funny, fabulous and heartwarming entertainment for the entire family, right?

In an attempt to head off any Catholic anger, the Pioneer Press theater reviewer , in recent years, always makes a reference to his Catholic school education when he reviews any show with “Catholic” content. So, that makes it all ok, right? He can get the joke and I can’t? I’ve no idea what Mr. Papatola’s religious views are, but I know from extensive personal experience that Catholic haters are rife within Holy Church.

Even the Lutheran shows often have an anti-Catholic joke or angle in their somewhere. In defense of my Lutheran brethren, I can be upset on their behalf about the continued perpetuation of Lutherans as eating only jello and “hot dish”. I don’t think they settled the Dakotas on jello. I’m pretty sure the Sioux Uprising did not occur over a bad jello mold or the audacity to offer “cold dish”.

Be really careful about what kinds of holiday productions you are giving your money too. Does anyone want to spend this faith-filled and joyous season as we anticipate the Birth of Our Savior sitting thru an hour or more of anti-Christian dreck? I suppose there are some folks who do. If there weren’t, these productions would die a merciful death.