christmas with jamie lynn
Music: Geniuser: Mud Black (2005)
[Warning: this post is PG-13] For a week the tubes have been scrambling like the hair-hoses on the head of that water sprinkler we used to play with as kids with the juicy news that St. Britney's lil' saintlet is with child, and has been for about three months. The 16 year old star of Nickelodeon's Zoey 101 has a media-shy 19 year old Baton Rouge construction worker for a baby-daddy, and after the OK magazine tell-all last Wednesday, said dude has decided to ask for Jamie Lynn's hand in marriage, you know, to make it right. They met in church, after all, so doing the right thing is sort-of overdetermined (and I say "sort-of" because one cannot help but think a little publicity opportunism is in play for the "grown-up" music career post-baby). As my rendition of this delicious turkey cools on the stove for carving and the parents watch something on Animal Planet, I thought I'd spend a little of my Christmas Eve blogging about a great topic: teen sex.
The miraculous timing of the announcement couldn't be better, of course, as the Christmas holiday is something of a catch-all for what was once Yule, Sol Invictus, and---my personal favorite---the Saturnalia of the Romans. These various traditions allowed for the relaxation of social codes and laws, the intermingling of classes, various kinds of worship for a good crop next spring, and party-hard style transgressions (a few sun-gods here, a fertility candle there, etc). Catullus reports Saturnalia was a splendid time of year, with slaves getting prepared meals from the masters and naked people capering about and . . . you guessed it, getting lots of nookie. Poles and holes were the reason for the season, and by the 16th century, decorated poles with hanging balls . . . and candles and, you know, garlands and stuff on it, transformed a paean to the pee-pee into bush for Jesus, don't you know, lighting the world in symbolic green fur for fertility! Jaime Lynn's announcement is in keeping with the true reason for the season---Christ, even if we go down the road with the die-hards (the ones who recreate The Nativity on their lawn with inflatable, light-inside Magi and camels) we have to admit it's still a party for Mary's poonlicious productivity, immaculate or not. Hawt!
What's amusing to watch on television, however, are all the network news stories that address (presumably) "concerned parents": how do you talk to your tween or teen about Jaime Lynn's pregnancy? Interviewed parents express shock that their tweens reported the story to them before they could get a chance to spin or censor. The premise of all these mediated concerns? That children are not sexual creatures. Never mind that the first minute your young one discovers their genitals he or she wants to fondle fondle fondle, or that first graders are getting orgasms by climbing ropes in gym. That doesn't happen. Children, and especially Nickelodeon stars, are without desire, sexless creatures who consume Little Debbie snack cakes and play video games (where they steal cars and open fire on innocent crowds with automatic weapons).
And this is what Christmas is all about: the kitsch that covers over the "unpleasant truth" that young people are people too, with the same desires and impulses most of us have, and the same televised mixed signals. The romancing of childhood is nice, but why so desexualized? Where's the "Santa Baby" song these days? "I Saw Mama Kissin' Santa Claus?" Tomorrow morning as you procure your shiny boxes from under that fuzzy phallus, take a moment to caress an "ornament," and then remember what it was like to have hot teen sex. Give it up for those sun gods, give your dog a steak, and maybe touch yourself a little---or better, touch someone else. Alas, although I cannot properly celebrate it myself, remember the reason for the season with this catchy refrain: Christmas is fer fuckin'!