Well, first of all, Thanksgiving isn't a religious holiday in Canada as it is in the US. Mennonites when I was growing up, didn't celebrate it, because it was seen as a celebration of excess. I still have a more or less take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards Thanksgiving.
We really only started to celebrate it in my family as we all grew up and moved out, and Thanksgiving, since it is a holiday and a day off work, became a time when we could all get together at our parents' place.
I don't think there is anything wrong with Thanksgiving but Thanksgiving isn't as big a deal anyway in Canada as it is in the US from what I have heard from American friends. Since I have never celebrated Thanksgiving in the US, I don't have a point of comparison there.
I think that there is nothing wrong with Thanksgiving as it is celebrated by Canadians generally. I don't think that each holiday has to have a religious significance. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. For a spiritually minded person though, the very notion of thanksgiving, would generally make one's heart and mind turn to God, I would think. It is like the Feast of Booths celebrated by the Israelites. It is a time of joy, and thanksgiving for the harvest but also for the Lord of the Harvest.
As far as Christmas is concerned, growing up, that meant attending church on Christmas Eve and having a Christmas programme put on by the children in Sunday School. At that time the services were all in German. We memorized the Christmas story as told by Luke in German, and usually each child had a Bible verse to memorize.
There may have been one play, that of Mary and Joseph and the angels proclaiming the new born king. But I don't recall that there were any other plays the way there are today. There were lots of Christmas carols sung (in German with a few in English). At the end of the programme, the children each received a bag of goodies: lots of peanuts, an orange, and assorted Christmas candies.
Then the entire congregation sang Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night) and the holiness in the air made the hairs on my arms stand up.
Then, around 9 pm, it was over and we all went home and hurried to bed to wait for Santa Claus, or Saint Nicolas, as we called him in our German dialect. Mennonites generally didn't have a problem with both and I never recall being confused about the reason for the season.
I absolutely believed in Santa Claus. In our home we put out porridge and a glass of milk for him and in the morning it was always gone. Proof positive. I believe that the way I thought of Santa was that long ago, God had sent His Son to save us, and each year, in memory of that day, Santa came and gave us presents in memory of that. I am sure that I was never told that. But I think that is how I put Santa and Jesus together in my mind.
We got tons of presents and I was always the first one up - usually at 2 am. Each time I was terrified that maybe Santa had forgotten us and each time, I discovered that he had in fact arrived. And then I would go running around waking my brothers and sisters and parents, and we would stay up all night eating candy and playing with our new toys. Our parents sure put on a good show for us, with being amazed at the toys Santa had brought us.
One year we got skis and the night was mild, so everyone went out skiing in the middle of the night. I remember the Christmases as the very best time ever, full of peace and a feeling of being loved by God.
My father once made us kids pick out a present for a very poor family. We took our responsibility very seriously and picked out a game that was seven games in one: snakes and ladders and checkers and I don't remember the others. It was the best present we could think of and we felt a twinge of pain at the thought of giving it away. So we knew it was a good choice. You couldn't give away something that didn't cause you pain. Then it wasn't a real present.
After church, on Christmas Eve, our dad, with all of us in the car, drove down the driveway of this poor family, with the lights out. Then he crept onto the front porch and banged a couple of times hard on the door and then he ran back to the car and we drove out of there as fast as we could. It wasn't a present if people knew you had given it. Then they might feel shame at their poverty and we might feel pride at our own goodness. The point was that we shouldn't be thanked for doing this. God sees all and we wouldn't let our right hand know what the left did when it came to things like that.
And we never breathed a word in school when we went back to school. Nowadays it seems to me that a kid wouldn't be able to keep such a secret since we were in fact dying of curiosity to know if they liked the game as much as we hoped they did.
Later, as I was the oldest in the family, I made my younger siblings pick out a family and a present and did the same thing with them. That was the whole meaning of Christmas.
We have done that most years since then.
I really think that in recent years, Christians have overdone the whole 'reason for the season' business. If people who aren't Christians have a materialistic view about the whole thing, I think that is their problem. I don't worry about how they celebrate it, if they celebrate it. Belief is a private thing that no one can take away from you. You make your own reason for the season in your heart and in your home. It doesn't have to extend to others beyond the home.
Belief is also not something that anyone can force on anyone else. It makes a mockery of belief to insist that non-Christians who celebrate a secular Christmas, must know the 'reason for the season.' They don't believe and no one can force it. God gives us free will. If He doesn't force Himself on us, what right do we have to force others to celebrate a non-secular Christmas?
Layla
