Did Brooklyn Start the War on Christmas?
As a person named (spoiler!) Virginia, it is a benign but permanent obligation of mine to nod and laugh whenever anyone (usually over the age of 60) dusts off a “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” joke. Which is fine, since I am staunchly on record as loving the shit out of every part of Christmas, other than the sickly bloat that follows when you eat nothing but candy from your stocking for breakfast. Everything is great!
However. I have also been “on” to a widespread lie I will euphemistically term “the Santa gambit” for many years now, because come on. Parents aren’t always subtle enough to pull this off! But apparently some of them are? They must be, because according to a strange new survey from Public Policy Polling, 52% of adults claimed that they do, in fact, think Santa Claus is real! Additionally, 47% believe that the War on Christmas is a real, dangerous thing, and 61% responded that if “Grandma got run over by a reindeer,” they wouldn’t bother with a lawsuit. Which is just dumb when you think about funeral costs.
Now, essentially what’s going on here is that people are really unstable around the holidays and Public Policy Polling is totally, delightfully exploiting that chink in our collective psychological armor. But, as with all news, I found myself gnawing at my cuticles, wondering, but what does this have to do with me, and with Brooklyn? If other big national trends (eating, listening to music) originated here, why not the War on Christmas?
