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Fox News’s Gutfeld! recently ran a light-hearted panel about whether Americans should keep their Christmas trees up all year and even redecorate them for other holidays, and the conversation ought to have been a reminder of what’s really at stake when small traditions get mocked by the cultural elite. This isn’t just about tinsel and lights; it’s about whether everyday families can hold on to the rituals that stitch communities together. Hardworking Americans know that traditions aren’t disposable trends to be swiped away by influencers and media producers chasing clicks.
A Christmas tree is a symbol — of family, faith, and the stubborn joy that gets people through another hard year of work and responsibility. Taking it down the minute December ends because some tasteless trendsetter says so is the same impulse that would turn Thanksgiving into a marketing calendar and Memorial Day into a weekend sale. Conservatives understand that symbols matter because they bind us to history and to one another; we don’t throw them away on a whim.
Some on the panel joked about redecorating the tree for every holiday, as if the best way to preserve culture is to dilute it until it means nothing. That tendency to flatten our traditions into themed content is the hallmark of the modern media-industrial complex — always repackaging, always monetizing, never respecting the deeper significance. If you want to celebrate creativity, fine, but don’t pretend that turning a nativity-adorned fir into a generic party prop is anything more than cultural surrender.
There’s also a practical, commonsense angle that the media rarely admits: families make their own choices, not corporations or opinion writers. If keeping a tree up all year brings warmth to a household or helps a family celebrate together more often, who are strangers on television to mock them? Conservatives defend local decision-making and family autonomy against the condescension of metropolitan tastemakers who lecture everyone else from behind their microphones.
At the same time, we should resist the fashionable impulse to weaponize tradition either. Redecking a tree to promote every passing cause turns meaning into marketing, and Americans deserve better than that. We can honor our customs without turning them into an every-season billboard; we can celebrate Christmas without letting the holiday be swallowed by performative trendiness.
This debate cracked open on a late-night panel, but it points to a broader fight: elites who rearrange the culture for clicks versus citizens who want continuity, faith, and common sense. If the choice is between a revolving-door calendar of curated feelings and the quiet, steady comforts of home and hearth, count me with the latter. Patriots ought to protect the rituals that keep us rooted, not give them away to the next viral idea.
So next year, when someone tells you a tree must be repurposed into a propaganda prop or tossed once January hits, remember who you are and what you value. Keep your traditions close, teach them to your children, and don’t let the coastal commentariat decide what your family can cherish. America was built on the stubborn love of ordinary things — and no trendy panel should get to tell us otherwise.
