Christmassy
I Pity the Fool on the Naughty List
The man, the myth, the legend from The A-Team, known for his mohawk, gold chains, and tough-guy persona.
Sam
December 19, 2024
I’m gonna start by saying that I’m not a religious man but I love the festive season, it’s fun and brings people together. I love the traditions, baking xmas cookies and putting up the decorations. I get in the mood by watching Christmas movies with the fam (whether they like them or not!). Let me be totally honest, when I think back to Christmas as kid I think of Santa and gifts. Yes we had family traditions and we always saw the same cousins and watched the same movies and I appreciate that now more than I did then. One Christmas really stands out for me and that’s because of He-Man…
Yes, He-Man. Maybe it’s because of that fateful December 24 when I, at the tender age of five or six, snuck out of bed and discovered that Castle Grayskull had appeared under the tree, and the milk and cookies next to it had been consumed-despite the fact that my parents were still awake in the next room. “Holy shit,” I thought. “Santa is FAST.” Or maybe it’s because of that same night, several hours later, when I woke up my mom and dad to ask if we could open presents yet, and my mother said something to me that I have never forgotten: “SAM, it is four o’clock in the fucking morning. Get your ass back in bed and stay there.”
Or maybe it is because I love both Christmas and He-Man, and yet both get hated on time and time again. The big complaint about He-Man, after all, is exactly the same one you hear about Christmas: that it’s a corny, fantasy camouflaging little more than an exercise in crass materialism. That whatever myth might surround it, its core reason for being is (or was) to get people to spend money.
Well, to that critique of both, I say: Bah. Humbug.
Oh, sure, both Christmas and He-Man do (or did) get people to part with their hard-earned cash; there’s no question of that. And I’m not going to deny the corniness of either – that is entirely the freakin point! What I do deny vehemently, though is the implicit presumption that because something has commercial or corny qualities, it is wholly devoid of substance. Further, I’ll bite the bullet and argue that those corny qualities are often exactly where the substance lies. I think that people should enjoy spending their earnings on things they want to enjoy with whoever they want to enjoy it with.
Take, for example, He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special, which I just watched for the first time in almost 30 years. The premise of the special is not quite the intergalactic “science fiction” that the series is usually. Basic summary is that two Earth children are accidentally brought to He-Man’s home planet of Eternia by his friend magic Orko, and then kidnapped by villains Hordak and Skeletor, whose boss wants them and the Christmas spirit they’ve brought with them (it clings to Earth children like the scent of cinnamon) destroyed. Yes let’s clarify that, Skeletor wants the Christmas spirit destroyed…
After a series of battles, the kids end up stuck with Skeletor, and a cyborg puppy, in a snow-covered mountain range. And as in so many of the best Christmas stories (Orko, incidentally, delivers the last line-“Merry Christmas, everybody!”-in perfect Tiny Tim intonation), the heart of the plot sees the bony ol’ grinch from that point on starting to redeem himself, at least temporarily.
Is it absurd? Not really-Skeletor has always smacked of being a softie (how else could his henchpeople have survived for so long, and why else would he have hired them in the first place?), and you always suspect that he’s secretly happiest on the rare occasions he deals with He-Man and the Masters as peers instead of enemies. (At the end of the special, when he protests, “I don’t like to feel good! I like to feel evil!” and everyone chuckles, the moment is much more Oscar the Grouch than Cobra Commander.) Still, it’s definitely cheesy.
Nonetheless, there is something very important, very substantial, about the lesson here, however clichéd, which is of course that there’s good in everyone. That’s not to say you should be overly trusting in the case of someone who has repeatedly tried to overthrow King Randor’s peaceful rule. But which lesson -“There’s good in everyone” or “Don’t be too trusting” – is ultimately more important?
Well, if the former is evocative of a He-Man cartoon or most cartoons for that matter. The latter trope is doled out the rest of the year in countless crime series – none of which is either sentimental nor memorable. But while the former is a straight-up moral of the story, I don’t think that’s true of the latter. No, although “Don’t be too trusting” is something I think most of the characters in CSI or NCIS would agree on, there is no real message you take away from any of these series aside from life being a bleak existence. So why don’t we savor these feel-good, sappy ideals He-Man lurrrrves so much.
So, O jaded readers, as you go about your lives this holiday season, maybe don’t be so quick to dismiss the mushy, the maudlin, or even the trite immediately out of hand. Immersed in the sickly sweet festive bathwater may be the Baby of All That Is Meaningful. And the baby’s name may just be Jesus. Or it could be Sam -that’s a pretty popular name lately.
Merry Christmas, one & all!
Sam-ta
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