The temperature tomorrow in Tel Aviv will be 75 degrees.  Keep this in mind for later - it becomes important.

On Monday night I played at a fundraiser for ImprovBoston.  When I say “played,” I mean it - it was a tremendously fun reunion of my mighty two-man sketch dynamo “The Irwin Smalls Trio,” and the whole night was terrific.

Except for this one moment.  Some comedian - and I’m 98% sure it was the great Tony V - said “Happy Holidays” to the crowd.  And one guy, out in the audience off towards stage right… booed.  That’s right, a guy booed “Happy Holidays.”  Swear to god.

Most of the crowd was perplexed.  Even among East Coast, hyper-informed Boston comedy fans, there are not all that many people who live inside the bubble of the Hatfield-McCoy Appalachia that is cable news. In fact, if the reason for the booing was readily apparent to you, be warned - you’re inside that bubble.

Tony handled it beautifully, and used the moment to segue into a great riff about Christmas. I’d be willing to bet that he’d run up against it before.

“It” is the new, virulent anger against the idea of saying “Happy Holidays” - which is to some people as horrifying and awful as some commie trying to sneak a “Season’s Greetings” by you - which is in turn as bad as a hearty, happy “Fuck Jesus!” apparently.  It’s a sign that you hate Christmas and Christianity and the Constitution and the principles that our nation was founded upon.  It’s a sign that you hate America, just like the President of the United States.

Again, if this is familiar turf to you, the most important thing to remember is that you are in the minority.  Whichever side of this stupid argument you fall upon… if you fall on either side, you need to bear in mind the fact that by and large, nobody else really cares.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a New York suburb.   We had lots of Jews, but also quite a few Catholics.  A couple of Muslims.  And that one kid who seemed to think he was from Mars and kept making beeping noises.  Anyway, maybe it’s because my neighborhood was a teensy bit religiously “diverse” but I don’t think so:   People said “Happy Holidays.”  AND “Merry Christmas.”  Nobody said “Season’s Greetings,” because that cannot be said out loud without sounding like a complete tool. But ultimately… nobody cared what exactly you said, the point was you were saying it.  You weren’t saying it for YOU; you weren’t saying it to play defense for your “endangered” holiday; you were saying it to genuinely wish someone a good time while school was out.

And let me say for the record - I think that my faith’s winter holiday is completely lame.   “Hanukkah?”  Really? My family gave it a nod, lit some candles, but we were actually way more into Christmas. We celebrated it with presents and a big meal and the kids’ firm belief in Santa Claus and everything.  Everything but the Jesus. It didn’t seem remotely weird to me that we did Christmas and barely paid attention to Hannukah, because Hannukah, as a mid-winter blowout… just kinda sucks.   Think about it – we’ve got a lamp that had one day of oil left and it burned for 8 days.  Great.  We’re going up against the iconic winter holiday commemorating the transformative birth of the son of God on earth, and all we’ve got is a celebration of fuel efficiency? Nice. I’d say that’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight, but it’s actually more like bringing a banana to a gunfight.  It’s not even ballpark, fergodsakes.

That’s not a criticism, though, honestly:  Hanukkah wasn’t meant to be so big.   Christmas is.  Christmas is a celebration cultivated by European people who were in the dead center of a cold, hopeless, dark winter, a time when your measly 8 hours of daylight is wan and sickly, and the long, cold, frozen night threatens to overwhelm your soul.  Christmas is necessary.  Hanukkah… well…

It’s 75 degrees in Tel Aviv.

[And lest you think I’m some kinda self-hating secular Jew, let me add - Passover blows Easter out of the water.  Passover is a simply tremendous holiday, with a great storyline, awesomely gluttonous feasting, and mandatory binge drinking.  Easter’s got too many moving parts, many of which are depressing, and that stupid rabbit makes absolutely no sense at all.  Note to Christians - try Passover next year.  Jesus did it!  Although, granted, his last one didn’t turn out completely well for him.]

Anyway, back to the point:  Pepsi isn’t going to advertise in the Super Bowl this year.

I know, that doesn’t seem to be the point I started with, and I’m beginning to sound all Glenn Beck-y here with this stream of unconnected Portents.  But that’s okay - I actually know where I’m going to land…

So, Pepsi.  Instead of advertising in the Super Bowl, they’re going to concentrate on their new “Pepsi Refresh Project,” a long-term effort that will grant millions of dollars to various charitable organizations.

Who could have a problem with that, right?  Well, this guy does, at least according to CNN Money:

Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, said the decision to not advertise in the Super Bowl was strategically important, but expressed doubts about Pepsi’s new campaign.

“It appears to be punt to political correctness,” said McKee, who runs Adbowl, a Web site that polls opinions of Super Bowl ads. While the decision could generate some buzz for Pepsi in the near term, “I don’t know if it’s going to grow their market share,” he said.

Okay, so my first impulse was to look into Steve McKee’s agency and yell “Aha!” because they prominently feature their work for Coca Cola.   My next thought was to note that anyone running a high-profile website about Super Bowl ads might have some personal stake in dissing companies who advance the idea that Super Bowl ads might be - ultimately - not so very important.

But that phrase “punt to political correctness” kept sticking in my craw.  Just what’s got you so riled up, Steve?  What did Pepsi ever do to you?

Aha.  It’s not Pepsi.  It’s those goddamned shadowy forces of PC, the ones who are busily killing this great country of ours!

Yes, one week ago Steve McKee of  McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising wrote a blog post entitled “It’s OK to Say “Merry Christmas,”" thus identifying himself as one of those “War on Christmas” believers.  For the uninitiated, that’s the condition where you no longer believe that Santa Clause exists but for some reason you cling to the childish belief that Bill O’Reilly does. Not to microfocus on Steve’s post (he seems like a nice enough guy), but this part jumps out at me:

Advertisers still want the huge spike in sales that Christmas provides but they’re afraid to acknowledge the holiday itself. It’s almost funny to watch them trip over themselves trying to find euphemisms as they avoid saying the dreaded “C” word….

It seems that companies have become so afraid of offending some mythical person out there that they’re unwilling to express their true sentiments.

Weirdly, Steve doesn’t call out any advertisers for not ending any of their commercials with a hearty “Happy Hanukkah!”  From what I hear, there are Jewish people at the helm of one or two big companies these days, sort of a disproportionate amount, even.  Not to mention the boardrooms that harbor all those agnostics and atheists.  And those advertisers definitely make their share of holiday money from Jews and atheists (and Muslims and Hindus and etc.).   I’d wager that if Steve got his wish and advertisers started expressing their “true sentiments,” then there’d be a whole lot fewer Merry Christmases on the airwaves.  And a lot more candles and question marks.

But of course that wouldn’t happen.  Because 1) as I said, Hanukkah is kind of a snooze, comparatively.  And 2)  advertising isn’t about companies “expressing their true sentiments.”  If it were, we’d all be currently enjoying Bank of America’s new “Thanks for the Money, Ya Dumb Fucknuts!” campaign.

But ultimately… who cares about this?  Why are you even reading this far?  The truth is that there’s a big lie that you have to believe in order to swallow this “War on Christmas” malarkey, and that’s the idea that the phrases “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” were not always part of our cultural (and advertising) lexicon, but were in fact invented in a stem cell lab by George Soros in 2002.

My memory says otherwise.   And my experience says that the only honest reason for anyone to wish anyone a happy or merry holiday or Christmas is because they are wishing someone some small measure of happiness or merriness.  Those wishes are something that you are giving away, and as such they are the only holiday wishes that you have any right to control.  Any further grumbling isn’t protecting your holiday - it’s just helping ad rates on Fox News while choosing a “righteous” way to nurture a hot little flame of anger and resentment in your heart that might otherwise be extinguished by genuine “Christmas spirit.”

Hey, I married a Christian girl.   Partly because I loved her, but mainly because the Rabbinical Shadow Council ordered me to infiltrate the Christian nation and pervert and violate the flower of their womanhood if at all possible.  Done and done!  The point is that I am writing this while sitting next to my fresh-cut, gaily decorated Christmas tree, and it’s pretty awesome.  It’ll more than tide me over, cheer-wise, until Passover.  So let me just say “Merry Christmas” to you all.  But if “Happy Holidays” would have offended you, let me amend that slightly:  Go fuck yourself.