It’s the night before the night before Christmas. Several thoughts have danced in my mind the past couple days:
- It goes without saying, maybe; but it must be awfully hard to be non-Christian in late December in most of the Northern Hemisphere. Everything revolves around this holiday we now refer to as “Christmas.” Late December (starting, of course, about October 15) seems to be all about Christmas. (Although I must say, I can’t find anywhere in my New Testament where it claims that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born in a European forest four days after the winter solstice.) On behalf of sensitive Christians everywhere, I apologize to all of you non-Christians for the European-American culture shoving this holiday down your throats.
- The whole “Christmas giving” thing is just about the exchange of value. I’ve realized this this year, finally, for the first time. “How much are you spending on me?” This is a question I’ve heard, in some form or other, from siblings, spouse and others. My God, why don’t we just give each other the money? Or better still, stop pursuing this whole business of “shopping for your Christmas list” and all the associated guilt trips. Or maybe best of all, just mandate that everybody has to go out and spend, say, at least half of one percent of their annual salary on retail crap before the end of the year. We’d still incur painful credit card debt in January, but at least we’d have less of a sense of panic about the actual shopping.
- Expectations are so high for this holiday that people get crazy. The only murder that I was ever aware of happening near me was Christmas Eve 1991. Two brothers living across the street from me in Nashville got into an argument, and one shot the other dead late at night–thankfully missing Santa and the reindeer. There’s just too much damn pressure. Why don’t we just run Thanksgiving again, shall we? Eat a lot and watch television, and either skip the gifts or just go together to the mall and spend our required percentage to keep the retailers (and office-party performers like me) in business.
- If I don’t hear another radio “Christmas song” this weekend, I won’t be sorry. I do love Vince Guaraldi and his trio, but the music from the Charlie Brown Christmas TV special is about all I can endure at this point.
- Finally, the ultimate insult to the “non-believers” appeared in the evening news today, the day before what the Germans refer to as Holy Evening: it was announced that the FBI has been spying on mosques since 2002. Peace on earth, goodwill toward (non-Muslim) men, I guess.
I’m eager for this holiday to be over with and to get back to my routine. I do, however, appreciate the 10 days off from school here in mid-winter.
Hmm.
I kind of agree with you and kind of don’t. Absolutely I agree with you about the effect of Christmas on the non-Christian folk. We have a sister-in-law who is Jewish, and she really is getting to the point where she begins to be hurt by our family party, which is billed in the invitation often as a “Christmas Party.” Maybe next year I can host and make it a holiday party instead. This year she was quite offended by all the cultural talk of taking “Happy Holidays” out of the stores and such. I really feel for her, and for the non-christians around me (there are many in my office, indeed among 20 people there are only about 5 who are Christian.
I’m less bothered by you about gifts, mostly because my family, both my parental family and my own kids, scaled back that years ago. We give only small, thoughtful gifts within my family – I brought back an ornament from a recent trip to Germany for each sibling, and I made a set of DVDs from old family VHS tapes for them, for example. This has carried over into all my gift giving – I always try to find something smallish that is just perfect for the recipient, and won’t clutter up their shelves. I end up giving a lot of wine.
With our kids, big gifts happen at Birthdays, not at Christmas, so how much one is spending or what one is getting become unimportant. We also open presents one at a time, so that each person can see the other person open it. When the kids were little (they’re now all adults) this all by itself got them focused on giving instead of receiving. The kids still make lists, but they tend to be book-heavy. (I love giving books)
Having reined this in a bit, helps us moderate expectations and just have a good time. It also helps with the pain in January.
I have struggled with this gift thing at Christmas, and come out of the struggle believeing that it is an important reminder of our need to give – that it is indeed the giving part that is most important. That helps me as I become older, and my house becomes fuller, and I find stuff less wonderful than I did when I was younger.
And of course, gift giving is one part of our Christmas holiday that has a scriptural basis – although perhaps we should be doing in for the Epiphany.
Julie H.
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Thank you for the comment, Julie. I was in a particularly Grinchy mood last night.
But the basis of what I wrote stands, I think.
It’s telling that on this, the second-most significant holiday in the Christian calendar, we’ve modified our church schedule to make it less stressful to go to church tomorrow. And I’ll probably be the only one from my family in church Sunday. What’s wrong with this picture?
I am also deeply troubled by the revelation of the spying on mosques and homes of Muslims. This story, incidentally, was buried in page A6 of this morning’s Washington Post. It’s not important enough for the front page.
It’s sometimes embarrassing to be in the majority segment of society, and thus to unwittingly become part of an often cruel cultural hegemony.
Yes I’m also deeply troubled by the revelation of spying, too, but I’m deeply troubled by just about everything our governement does these days, The juxtaposition of this with the recent complaints of “taking Christ out of Christmas” by evangelicals really grates, but to me it seems to be just another step, and I keep hoping (against hope, probably) that this is the one that will fell the current leadership and let us get back to some level of sanity.
I also dispute a bit that this is the second biggest holiday; for me, theologically, I think of it as third, after Easter and Pentecost, and therefore more on a par with Jewish Hannukah. It is certainly the biggest Cultural holiday for Christians, but most of the stuff we do for Christmas (with the notable exceptions of going to church and putting up Creche scenes) are really pagan customs. If we think about it, we’re really celebrating the solstice.
That said, our pastor, Verne’s Sermon from last week is still ringing a bit in my ears, and I do think that your basic point is right. This holiday in it’s most selfish and irreligous form has been pretty much stuffed down our culture’s neck. And it is very VERY hard to take a step back and say no, I’m NOT going to be a part of the continuing escalation of this holiday.
But I still think Christmas and many of the acouterments of the holiday are a good thing. It’s so much a family holiday, much like Thanksgiving, in our culture where families are so split apart. The gifts of Christmas are the place where many of our children first begin to understand giving to others – very reinforcing of that.
And of course there is that story about the baby in the manger, whose deep love is so important to us who do follow some kind of Christian Faith.
After all, that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Julie H.
Dave,
I think that’s outrageous! I didn’t even see such an article in our newspaper, The Times of India. I truly have nothing against your government but everyday it seems they are getting sicker and more power hungry than the day before. It’s like they want a giant sea of monitored and controlled humans responding to and bowing before their every command.
About Christmas, you won’t believe how completely your thoughts match mine. I’m not a christian but we do still exchange gifts and have a Christmas tree, which we decorate every year. It’s more of a joyous and nice occasion than anything else for us. As far as I can remember, it’s always been like this in our family. I have a few christian friends and I’m invited over to their houses every year on Christmas.
Most of these friends don’t even like the christian tag on them. Going to church on Sunday is more of a household custom and sometimes a compulsion for them.
My parents are Hindus but I don’t really follow the religion or go to a temple. I also think that it isn’t right to say someone is born into a religion. Religion should be a choice.
Well, that’s all. Just wanted to share my thoughts with you.
I wish you a happy and relaxed Christmas and a long holiday.
-Simran S.
If Christmas was really about pushing a Christian ritual down our throats, I wouldn’t mind that much. Christian values make sense – as long as they’re not fundamentilist (this is coming from an atheist). But what is happening has nothing to do with the Christian part of Christmas. I’m no Bible expert, but I doubt that it tells us to go shopping like mad, start playing Christmas songs in stores in October, and basically drive each other crazy.
There’s even a radio station here in Charlotte that started playing ONLY Christmas songs in November. Can you imagine that? If you didn’t get enough drummer boys and white christmasses in the stores and from normal radio, this is where you can get your fix! No breaks (well, except for the commercial ones, of course)!
Christmas is weird. A man killed his wife and himself today in Germany, and in Sri Lanka, a member of congress was shot during Christmas mass. It’s the most peaceful time of the year. I doubt that these are the only casualties.
I meant to hit the Preview button there – and I should have, because there’s a really embarrassing typo in it.
Anyway, just wanted to add that it’s actually quite easy to stop the madness. My parents and I stopped exchanging gifts years ago, and with my girlfriend I usually set a rather low limit for the price of gifts (like $30). That makes this time much more enjoyable, and I really don’t see why we have to buy each other’s favors.