The Truth About Christmas

So, I was seriously upset by Christmas' childhood. McEachern is a total jerk and so are the people at the orphanage. He also is way too young to quite understand the concept of punishment and reward. His naivtee kills me when the dietician tries to bribe him. He kept thinking she was going to hit him again, but she keeps waving the dollar coin in front of his face instead, confusing poor Christmas. (p. 125)

This aspect of abusive nature towards children is also brought forth in the statement, "Perhaps he expected to be punished upon his return, for what, what crime exactly, he did not expect to know, since he had already learned that, though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too." (p. 140) The way the adults treat Christmas definitely seems to suggest this. Children are not adults and therefore don't know any better than to trust everyone. However, adults can't get it through their minds that Children are this naive and won't take into consideration the reliabiltiy of the person they gather their information from.

Comments

[Connor G.]

I agree. Although initially I thought "well, okay. This is kinda how people were raised in the 1920's I guess", but then when McEachern goes nuts trying to basically "avenge" God for the "sins" Christmas committed and thought of Christmas as "Satan"(all in Ch. 9), I realized that this dude is a grade-a douche.

[Bridget T.]

Yes i agree that McEachern is way too hard on Christmas and probably insane. Now it is clear why Christmas was so upset/angry that Ms. Burden prayed for him. It is easy to see that Christmas is messed up from his horrific childhood.

[Will K.]

I noticed a lot of times it said something like, "even then he was old enough to..." or "at a later age he would realize that..." I think that age was meant to play a large role during that passage. The contrast between what each a child and an adult knows appears throughout the book so far. These are some good examples of that.