The Grotesque spectacle of War Decorated for Christmas
As America increasingly distances itself from the realities of conflict, a disturbing trend has emerged: adorning instruments of war with festive cheer, blurring the lines between peace adn destruction.
The USS joseph P. Kennedy, a Gearing-class destroyer retired to battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, is draped in radiant white Christmas lights, their reflections shimmering on Mount Hope Bay. This seemingly innocuous display belies a deeper, more unsettling phenomenon. The juxtaposition of holiday joy with a machine “built to kill people,” as one observer bluntly put it, speaks to a growing disconnect between American society and the true cost of war.
Fall River, a post-industrial city grappling with decline, is steeped in a history of tragedy and resilience.Known for the infamous 1892 axe murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and as the hometown of troubled basketball star Chris Herren, the city finds a measure of pride in battleship Cove, a sprawling memorial boasting the world’s largest collection of World War II-era naval vessels. For a local resident,growing up passing “the Joey P” was commonplace,but the meaning of decorating a warship for Christmas didn’t register until a personal connection brought the realities of war into sharp focus.
That connection came through a grandfather, a veteran who manned the tail gun of a B-24 during World War II. Living near the destroyer in his later years, he observed the festive display with growing dismay.”Repulsive,” he declared, encapsulating a sentiment born from firsthand experience with the brutal realities of conflict. This sentiment arose from a newfound closeness with his grandson, forged through shared moments – organizing bookshelves, family barbecues, and even debates sparked by the grandfather’s unexpected foray into the world of Harry Potter.
The core of the issue, as the veteran recognized, is a growing American detachment from the consequences of war. Having come of age in the 1990s,many Americans grew up believing “real war” didn’t exist for them. While the U.S. military continued to engage in conflicts across the globe – from the Gulf War, with an estimated 200,000 Iraqi deaths, to interventions in Yugoslavia and Somalia – these events were often filtered through the lens of sanitized news segments and fleeting attention spans. Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, America has increasingly conducted war without truly knowing war, with less than one percent of the population serving in the military and an even smaller fraction experiencing combat. the language itself reflects this distancing: “operations” and “strikes” replaced the stark reality of “war,” sounding cleaner and more palatable.
This detachment is vividly illustrated by the proliferation of decorated killing machines across the country. Beyond the Joseph P. Kennedy, an M-1 Abrams tank at the Detroit Arsenal is adorned with lights and reindeer, suggesting Santa might need to deploy lethal force during his gift deliveries. The B-52 bomber, a mainstay of American air power and arguably the deadliest aircraft ever built, is covered in Christmas lights at the Wings Over The Rockies Museum in Denver, complete with a Rudolph-inspired red nose. The USS Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia, now hosts a winter festival with more lights than Disneyland and even a holiday-themed bar. Even the site of the first atomic bomb detonation, the white Sands Missile Range in new Mexico, features a Christmas-tree-decorated ballistic missile, complete with a “Looney Tunes” TNT detonator lever for the annual lighting ceremony.
The USS New Jersey,a decorated battleship with a complex history including perhaps devastatingly inaccurate bombardments during the Lebanese Civil war,now sports a Christmas tree crafted from its interaction antennae,alongside other decorations created by local nonprofits. This trend extends into popular culture, with depictions of the North Pole increasingly resembling a militarized base under NORAD command, complete with elves in fatigues and high-tech gear.Even seemingly benign Christmas films feature violent imagery, such as an elf wielding a chainsaw or mrs. Claus gifting a child with an exploding cookie – essentially, a grenade.
If Christmas celebrates life, peace, and understanding, war represents their antithesis. By attempting to combine the two, we diminish the meaning of both. The problem is compounded by a public largely disconnected from the realities of modern warfare. As of early September, the pentagon had launched at least 29 strikes on purported drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, resulting in at least 105 deaths. Troops and warships are mobilizing off the coast of venezuela, including the USS Gerald R. Ford,the largest warship ever built,which previously shared a digitally altered image of Santa’s sleigh taking off from its deck. While the Ford isn’t currently adorned with lights, the image underscores the normalization of militarization within the holiday spirit.
Recent reports detail a raid by U.S. soldiers on a Venezuelan oil tanker,resembling a scene from an action movie. However, the administration is actively suppressing footage of a subsequent drone strike that left two men clinging to wreckage in the ocean, suggesting a reluctance to confront the human cost of these operations.
The author acknowledges a personal reluctance to view such footage, but argues for the necessity of confronting the brutal realities of war. Before adding to the body count with further conflicts viewed through sanitized lenses, we must, at the very least, respect the gravity of war by reckoning with its true meaning.What if we understood the consequences of the violence perpetrated on our behalf? What if we knew what war truly looks like when it’s not strung with Christmas lights?
