Do They Know It's Christmas Time?: Difference between revisions

What happens when [[Status Quo Is God]] smashes into a [[Christmas Episode]]. Perhaps no one ever goes to church or mentions a deity the rest of the year, but every now and again, around Christmas, our heroes will be shown the [[True Meaning of Christmas]] (it's never presents - well, [[Subverted Trope|not usually]]) and caring, and realize just how lucky they really are. They may even go to a Christmas service, [[Christianity Is Catholic|probably midnight mass on Christmas Eve]]. At the very least, they attempt to be kinder and more charitable toward those around them, embrace the brotherhood of man, and so forth.

 

 

Compare and contrast with [[Santa Clausmas]], [[Did I Mention It's Christmas?]] and [[Soapland Christmas]].

 

* The ''[[Love Hina]]'' Christmas special focuses on Keitaro and Naru trying to meet up with each other while it is still Christmas Eve.

** ...as does the ''[[Marmalade Boy]]'' Christmas episode.

* On ''[[Vandread]]'', Hibiki gives Dita the gift of Christmas snow, despite their position on a ship in deep space, by grabbing a chunk off a nearby comet with his Vanguard mecha.

* In ''[[Kimagure Orange Road]]'' the Christmas episode involved Kasuga [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|time traveling]] [[Reset Button|three times]] in order to create a Christmas Eve meeting that didn't leave either [[Love Triangle|Hikaru or Madoka]] furious at him, due to the [[Serious Business|Serious implications]] of a [[Wacky Marriage Proposal|Christmas Eve Date]].

* ''[[Ranma ½]]'' has one of these. [[Heterosexual Life Partners|Genma and Soun]] are grumbling about how, in their day, [[Lampshade Hanging|everyone was still Buddhist and didn't celebrate Christmas.]] [[Feminine Women Can Cook|Kasumi]] comes in and asks if everyone is ready for a Christmas ham, leading Genma and Soun to cry, "Hooray for Christmas!"

** Similarly, in the original manga version of ''[[Dominion Tank Police]]'', Al gives Leona a Christmas gift, which she gladly accepts, though she mentions if her devoutly Buddhist grandfather ever got wind of it, he'd smack her with his boukken.

 

* In spite of no one ever mentioning deities or religion of any kind in the highly supernatural world of ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'', the wizarding world still celebrates Christmas. Presumably this stems from the series being set in [[Urban Fantasy|modern Britain]], as well as the author herself [[Author Appeal|being a Christian]].

** Or rather, that religion is considered a private matter in Britain, and so the characters would naturally refrain from using it to spiel of Aesops.

* [[C. S. Lewis]] was a fairly inclusive fellow. While [[Narnia]]'s creator Aslan is indisputably Jesus Christ as a huge talking lion, the world is also populated with various mythical figures. In later books, we would see Triton, Bacchus, and Silenus and their various nymph daughters tending to parts of the world. But in the first book, many was the child delighted to learn that <s>Santa Claus</s> Father Christmas visited Narnia as well as Earth for Christmas. The Narnians certainly had no complaints.

 

* The episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' "Amends," which ends with the heroic vampire Angel being saved from {{spoiler|his Christmas morning suicide attempt by a [[Deus Ex Machina|miraculous]] snow storm (in southern California, for those of you wondering why it's miraculous)}}.

** Subverted, the <s>people</s> gods that caused it, called [[The Powers That Be]] are an important thing on [[Angel|his own show]].

* Parodied to the max in the [[Britcom]] ''[[Nightingales]]''. In the Christmas special, three security guards are attempting to celebrate Christmas when they are approached by an unmarried, highly pregnant girl called 'Mary' for a room for the night. They let her stay, only if she promises NOT to be an allegory for the true meaning of Christmas. She later [[Away in a Manger|gives birth]], but to a stream of unlikely objects (such as a goldfish, a set of golf clubs and a toaster). At the end of the episode, she reveals that in fact, it WAS an allegory all along and mocks the guards for not noticing how she was showing that Jesus had been replaced with a stream of consumer goods. The episode ends with [[The Pope]] and [[Harold Pinter]] leaving on a trandem.

* At the end of the TV movie ''[[The Hebrew Hammer]]'', the titular Hammer brags to his mother that he's saved Hanukkah, and she isn't at all impressed - it's not like he saved one of the high holy days.

* The Christmas episode of ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' has this. Especially blatant in that it's the (otherwise irreligious) ''teenage kid'' and not the parents who insists that everyone attend Christmas Eve mass.

* Subverted in the ''[[Community]]'' episode "Comparative Religion". Shirley plans an overtly religious Christmas party for the group, but learns that the others are all non-Christian. In the end they share a decidedly secular, inclusive holiday together.

* ''[[Glee]]'''s Christmas episode of the third season had Rachel, who is very vocally Jewish, greedily demanding Christmas gifts from her boyfriend and eventually learning the "true meaning of Christmas" after having a bible verse about Jesus read to her during a Christmas special the Glee club is shooting. Her Judaism is not mentioned until literal last second of the episode as the camera is pulling away and Rachel throws out a "Happy Hanukkah" that is essentially lost in the shuffle of the other noise going on.

 

* The [[Trope Namer]] is "Do They Know It's Christmas?," a charity song by Band Aid. It is certifiably an [[Ear Worm]], but it really doesn't have to do much with the trope; the question is whether the poor and starving children in Ethiopia (which was having a famine at the time) knew about the joy and happiness that was their due on Christmas Day. Of course, while their hearts may have been in the right place the Western-centric overtones of this premise was not lost on younger listeners (For instance, [[Did Not Do the Research|most Ethiopians are Christians]], although they don't celebrate Christmas the same way, and, being Orthodox, it falls on 7 January; to say nothing of the [[Unfortunate Implications]] of a line like "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you"), and so the song was parodied and its premise subverted by "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?," which is what happens when a bunch of (mostly Canadian) indie rockers get their hands on something like this.

* [[Tom Lehrer]] mocked this trope with his song "A Christmas Carol":

* A version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" first popularized by Pete Seeger and the Weavers makes note of the love and goodwill that predominate during the holiday season, then rhetorically asks, "Why can't we have Christmas the whole year around?"

 

* An Easter Sunday strip of ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' from [[The Eighties]] calls attention to this very trope. The Pattersons get dressed up and go to church, where young Michael is somewhat fascinated by the choir and stained glass windows and such. He asks his mother if the church is always open and she tells him yes, it's open every Sunday. In the final panel, to the amusement of the nearby preacher (and the chagrin of his parents), he innocently inquires, "Then how come we only come here twice a year?"

* Huey Freeman of ''[[The Boondocks]]'' is an inversion, as he is seen to become ''even more'' cynical and cold around the holidays due to knowledge of the origin of all of the secular traditions and how bastardized the holiday really is.

'''Lucy:''' What are you, some kind of fanatic or something? }}

 

* From the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'', the story in which Bungie and Ultra-Man brow-beat the normally aloof Achilles, who's never really experienced a ''real'' Christmas himself, into dressing up as Santa Claus for a local orphanage and handing out presents. It ends with Achilles discovering a gift-wrapped present on his bunk in Guardians headquarters. We never find out who sent it, or what was in it, but it is implied that the gift came from his father.

* In the [[Whateley Universe]], the story "Ayla and the Grinch". Except that Ayla and her big sister can't go to the Christmas Eve church service because of what they are.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Static Shock]]'' had a Christmas episode which dealt with homelessness - Virgil is forced to constantly miss holiday celebrations over a Bang Baby with the power to cause snow storms. Following the advice of his preacher, he tries to see the Bang Baby as a person and realizes that she's just a scared, crazy, homeless girl who never meant to hurt anyone. It all follows up with Virgil, Richie, and their families attending a massive Christian/Jewish/Islamic celebration at the local church. Very touching, although the Hawkins family already was shown to put massive amounts of time and energy into community service and helping others, so yeah...

* Hilariously subverted in ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'' when Spidey tries to use this on Sandman and Rhino.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

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[[Category:This Index Is Not an Example]]

[[Category:Christmas Tropes]]

[[Category:Plots]]