I have one wish for Christmas. Stop celebrating it please! Every year the US fires up this billion dollar industry that spans 3 or 4 months. There are tons of traditions and ideas and novelties. There are countless TV specials all talking about wishes and meanings.
But you know what, it's a really simple holiday. It's really of no significance at all to anyone who isn't a Christian. But for Christians, like me, this is one of the two most important memorials of the year. But it isn't about snow, or lights, or gifts, or sharing, or a warm community feeling, or a dog finding his way home or some old man reuniting with his son. And it definitely has nothing to do with stupid cheap cups. It's a memorial of what we believe to be a pivotal moment in history. The event where THE GOD takes on human flesh. But if you don't beleive this, it's just the birth of some ancient guy, so why do you need to make such a fuss over it?
If you want to celebrate a mid-winter holiday, go right ahead! Just stop trying to coopt my Holy Day. What would you think if someone decided to have a barbecued pig for Ramadan? Or a kegger for Passover? Or ate all the food on the butsudan at Obon and covered it with cheap plastic balls? So why is it ok to trash this Christian holiday?
The answer probably has to do with so-called Christians themselves. Many don't understand the day either. Or have grown up in the midst of all the other crap so they actually associate all that with Christmas. Many I know may include some Bible reading or church service as the obligatory tradition, and then go right on with any other cultural event of the season. But they'll be hot to make sure you leave Christ in there!
Once again, I'm not knocking those events in themselves. I'm just saying that isn't Christmas! So just stop calling it that. Keep Santa Claus and snowflakes and trees and presents. Just don't keep Christ with that mess! Better to drop it altogether. If you did, I might actually be able to find some of it fun. But as it is, it's a season of painful disrespect of the single most important part of my life.
Leave Christmas for those of us who hold this to be a serious part of our lives to keep as we should.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
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I respect your point of view and tend to agree with you in a qualified sense though I don't follow you all the way to your conclusion. For myself, holy day and holiday are one and the same. They aren't in by their nature in competition with each other. I find modern trends like consumerism and the cult of entertainment to be far more problematic. This offered in good will of course.
ReplyDeleteBill
I think it is the consumerism and cult of entertainment (good phrase by the way) that I am most at odds with. I hear Christians harp of keeping Christ in Christmas, but what they mean foisting some gloss of religiosity on top of an otherwise entirely secularized holiday. I'm fine with a mid-winter celebration of family, or the season, or whatever. But that isn't a celebration of Christ's birth. So rather than cheapen the real meaning, I'd prefer they just call it something different and leave the term "Christmas" to apply to a holiday for those who know what it is. Granted some try to keep it that way. But it's so overwhelmed by the other use of the term as to make it really difficult (for me at least) to enjoy. When I would go outside and contemplate the stars that may have shined on this event and the shepherds who saw the same stars, I'm dragged into a gift-giving frenzy. When I would eat a humble meal in remembrance of the manger and stable, I'm forced into overblown feasts with people I'm supposed to like but otherwise have nothing to do with.
DeleteI hear you my friend.
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