How the Baby Boomers Stole Christmas

Coal for everyone over 50!

Please go read Christopher Ingraham’s wonderful post in the Washington Post’s Wonkblog about how the Baby Boomers have co-opted the airwaves, Spotify and Pandora by cramming Christmas standards like Silver Bells, Most Wonderful Time of the Year and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas down everyone’s throats.

Or, as he puts it:

“What we think of as “Christmas music” is really just a seasonal exercise in baby boomer nostalgia.”

Ingraham has scientifically proven that what we’re celebrating is not the most wonderful time of the year, but the most wonderful time of American history, in the opinion of Baby Boomers, and maybe even objectively. (Well except for women, black people and gays — but that’s a different story.)

Part of the reason the boomers’ childhood classics endure [Ingraham writes] is that the postwar era really was an exceptional time in American history: jobs were plentiful, the economy was booming, and America’s influence on the world stage was at its peak.

There’s even a nifty chart that shows when various Christmas tunes were written, and how contributions from the 1980's and 1990's have been systematically snubbed.

If you are not ready to stuff the stocking of every Baby Boomer you know with coal after reading Ingraham’s piece, please watch this Baby Boomer Santa video shared by one of my favorite 20-somethings after I asked him why everybody hates the Baby Boomers.

If you know of any other ways Baby Boomers have ruined Christmas, please feel free to add them here [use the little + sign that shows up on the right]. Suggestions: Lionel Train Sets, taking the Christ out of Christmas, putting it back in, or really anything you can think of. Because, as you know, we are responsible for everything.

Just in: This is great too.