I see Christmas and the celebration of it a little differently. My parents tried to make Christmas, the secular part, special. I know it was a lot of work, and I know it more now that I am older and am the one trying to make Christmas special for everyone, and trying to accommodate every one's notion of what is special. So it is hard for the woman who is busy with all this stuff to feel any sort of peace and goodwill to men.
Since it is simply a fact that I am going to be the one doing so much, and it is simply a fact that I feel like an abused servant at Christmas time, I try to turn that into a good thing. I try to mentally put it in a place where I am doing this for Christ, who was our servant.
The Christmas before last, for once, there were no family gatherings on Christmas Day but we had one the day after Christmas. So I thought this was my chance to have a more relaxed Christmas since usually I am cooking on Christmas Eve for Christmas Day. And when that happens I have no time to go to church.
But on that particular Christmas, for the first time in maybe 3 Christmases, we went to the Christmas programme at the church we like to celebrate it at.
So come Christmas Day, I was playing carols and singing along. I had a goose planned for dinner. I was also mixing up all the stuff to cook and bake to take along to the family gathering the following day.
I mentioned that we have a tradition of picking out poor families and buying presents for them. For years now it has been one particular immigrant family with thirteen children. This isn't anonymous. I wanted that but my husband had other ideas. Since Europeans tends to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, I dropped off the presents a week or so before Christmas so that my presents don't take away from their celebration.
At three in the afternoon, guess who shows up in the middle of my peaceful Christmas? All fifteen people in that family. Guess who was horrified? Me! I couldn't believe that they were ruining my Christmas. They came loaded with versions of their ethnic holiday foods - they knew that weren't going to just have dinner on hand for an extra fifteen people. But honestly, I was so mad, I was shaking.
So I went downstairs to collect myself. I thought of saying, Sorry! We were just leaving for a family gathering.
But I realised, that they were, from their heart, with their company and their food, wanting to reciprocate what I had been doing for many years with Christmas presents. So I swallowed hard, said a quick little prayer and went back upstairs and put my defrosted goose back in the fridge, got out the toys, put their food in the fridge and we celebrated Christmas. And I did all the running around and I had no fun at all. I was doing it so that they would have a wonderful Christmas - which they did. They were so happy with themselves.
I believed in Santa whom we called Saint Nicolas. I don't remember at all when I no longer believed in Santa. I suppose that after hearing enough children tell me there was no Santa, and hearing them laugh at kids who still believed in Santa, I must have got the hint somewhere along the line.
My father would make pretend reindeer tracks outside. The porridge and the milk disappeared somewhere. I thought I heard a reindeer on the roof one Christmas and I was terrified that I wouldn't get any presents because I wasn't asleep. I don't think there was any attempt to make the religious aspects of Christmas special. They were special because they were real. We didn't sit around for weeks on end talking about how God sent His Son. We already knew that. We took that part for granted.
We sang Frosty the Snowman along with Silent Night. So I don't see any difference between my childhood Christmases and the secularization of Christmases that you don't like. Christmas was advertised then too. Toys were always wanted then too. I wrote letters to Santa about all the toys I wanted.
First of all Christ is the reason for the season only for Christians. He is not the reason for the season for everyone. I don't concern myself with how others celebrate Christmas, even if they leave Christ out of it and Frosty in it. I don't have to. No one is forcing me to leave Christ out of it.
I think that the problem began when Christians made a private religious celebration public, by putting up nativities and other religious symbols in public places, they invited the public into 'their' celebration. And then when the non-religious public took to the celebration and made it their own as well with secular elements, then we object. If we had had proper respect in the first place and took our faith seriously, we wouldn't have made a public spectacle out of it and just asked for it to be abused.
Furthermore, we are trying to have it both ways. The early church co-opted existing pagan festivals and built Christian festivals around them. Christians can't say that non-believers 'stole' their holiday when Christianity in fact usurped pagan festivals.
However I don't think that the fact that many Christian festivals coincide or have some pagan elements in them negates Christmas. Paul, when he went to Athens, noticed that the Athenians, in their effort not to ignore any god had put up altars to the unknown god.
Acts 17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
You notice how Paul says that he is there to tell them who this unknown god is whom they worship in their self-admitted ignorance. In other words, Paul is taking an existing belief and co-opting it and using it to explain the Jewish-Christian God.
We don't know when Jesus was born, and December 25 only acts as a symbol of that day to us. And the winter time was chosen precisely because of the pagan festivals, that it wouldn't be strange to the people to to celebrate something at that time. Attaching it to Christianity became a means of making Christ known to others during a time when people were jolly and looking for any excuse to celebrate.
You mention that some fundamentalist Christians have taken on Jewish celebrations for being less secular, I suppose. Although if Christians are now usurping Jewish festivals, I guess the Jews are thinking, there goes the neighbourhood. Jewish traditions don't exist in a vacuum either - they too have connections to other celebrations by pagans in the regions where their celebrations began. Instead of thinking of it as though Christmas has let the secular or pagan in, why not think of it as how secular or pagan have let Christ in?
The reason that there is less commercialisation in North America among Jews, is because minorities tend not to impose their celebrations on anyone. Jews took their faith a little more seriously than we did. They didn't put on public displays and insist that every street corner had a Hanukkah menorah. And so they remained truer to the spirit of their celebration than we did, although even they, in countries that are predominately Christian, have added elements to their celebration, such as more presents, instead of the traditional gift of money given over the days of Hanukkah.
I really don't see that it is so difficult to keep Christ at the centre of your celebration but I don't think that gifts are things that take away from Christ. We give gifts to each other in remembrance of the gift of Christ to us. We light our Christmas lights in memory of the Light of the World. If there is a connection way back to pagan celebrations, well then, those folks back then, ignorantly worshipped the unknown God, who now, in our Christian celebration of that old celebration, him declare I unto you.
It doesn't strike me as even slightly odd that many Jewish or Christian ideas have roots or similarities in various pagan beliefs. If we all come from the same source, the same beginnings, of course our mythology will all lead back to our common story, and every faith will contain something in it that says, we have forgotten the original story, but this is the altar to the unknown God whom we think we knew once.
And who was gracious enough to allow us Gentiles to participate in the faith that was given in trust to the Jewish people, to hold for the world, long ago.
Layla
