Brief: Class Wars on Christmas

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Philosophy

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you seen the “Grinch prank” video trend? Bad parenting, yes. But also a nod to the conflicts, ancient and modern, embedded in Christmas. Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly would tell you, there has never been a “war on Christmas.” Rather, Christmas itself has always been a battleground over love, dignity, and resources. What we’re really fighting over is who gets care in systems built on scarcity and extraction. Vignette 1: The Original Creche Vignette 2: Krampus Vignette 3: Dickens, Chekhov, and Andersen Vignette 4: The Christmas Truce, 1914 Vignette 5: Dr. Seuss and the Grinch Show Notes Andersen, Hans Christian. The Little Match Girl. Copenhagen, 1845.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10623 Boyle, James. “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain.” Law and Contemporary Problems 66, no. 1–2 (2003).https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol66/iss1/2/ Chekhov, Anton. “Vanka.” 1892.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13418 Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46 Imperial War Museums. “Christmas Truce, 1914.”https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/christmas-truce-1914 Imperial War Museums. “Letter Describing the Christmas Truce.”https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030000503 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. The Principles of Socialism and the War of 1914–1915. Marxists Internet Archive.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/princip/ McCoy, Michael. “What Is Tinsel Made Of? (and How It Changed Over the Years).” Chemical & Engineering News, December 15, 2014.https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i50/Tinsel-Made.html Mitterauer, Michael. “Peasant and Non-Peasant Forms of Family Organization in Relation to the Physical Environment and the Local Economy.” Journal of Family History 2, no. 2 (1977).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/036319907700200203 Nel, Philip. Dr. Seuss: American Icon. New York: Continuum, 2004.https://books.google.com/books?id=Yt4QAQAAIAAJ Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171502/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/ Restad, Penne L. Christmas in America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-in-america-9780195043659 Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691018448/consumer-rites Science History Institute. “History and Future of Plastics.”https://www.sciencehistory.org/topics/plastics Smithsonian Magazine. “The Origin of Krampus, Europe’s Evil Twist on Santa.” December 4, 2015.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-origin-of-krampus-europes-evil-twist-on-santa-180957438/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:34.9	Hello everyone, it's Matthew here.
0:38.5	This brief is called Class Wars on Christmas.
0:50.0	This is Conspiruality, where we investigate the roots and intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
0:59.5	You can follow myself, Derek and Julian, on Blue Sky, and the podcast is on Instagram and threads under its own handle.
1:01.5	So that's Conspiruality Pod.
1:03.6	Please support our Patreon.
1:09.4	You can also find me personally on YouTube and TikTok at Antifascist Dad.
1:22.4	So there's this trend on YouTube. Lots and lots of instances of family videos in which parents prank their very young children on Christmas morning by having dad or an uncle or someone, dress up in a
1:29.4	Grinch suit, barrel roll through the front door, stuff the presents into garbage bags,
1:34.8	rip up the ribbons and bows in the process, and trash the decorations while the kids wail
1:39.7	in horror. I watched this one Grinch tear all the stockings down from their nails on a wooden staircase,
1:47.9	leaving like threads and strips of fabric behind. Now, there's a range of intensities to these
1:55.6	breach and clear operations. Some Grinches play the coward and allow the five-year-olds to jump on them and beat them up until they
2:03.2	drop the loot and stagger out the door defeated and in these videos i think the holiday might be
2:09.1	restored fairly quickly after the interruption of you know an intense joke that is also self-evident
2:16.6	but then there's some grinches who charge into the room
2:19.6	in all seriousness like it's the UFC Octagon or like they're playing Call of Duty. They're picking
2:26.0	up weeping three-year-olds and tossing them onto the couch. They're ripping ornaments off the
2:32.0	trees and smashing them.
	...

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