As the friend who has sworn off Christmas, I would like to respond, and I hope this will be a fruitful counterpoise, in the same way that your post, Michele, has been a fruitful counterpoise to the rant I poured out at you.
I’d like to clarify the cause of my objection. It’s not to the *secularization* of Christmas, per se, but to the way multiple celebrations with different goals have been so mixed together that we can’t see clearly enough to separate the pieces. For example, the day also has European, pagan roots celebrating the northern hemisphere’s return to light. (Trees, wreathes, holly, ivy, ornaments—all pagan. This is not judgmental, just historical.) It is a family holiday—in the US, a nice “bookend” to Thanksgiving, a chance to splurge on festivity in the darkest days before resetting the stops on New Year’s. It is a sentimental holiday, a day for nostalgia and idealized goodwill (which owes a great deal to Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol). It is a commercial holiday, which feeds our gargantuan, capitalist economy. And it is a day to celebrate the birth of incarnate love in our world. “Christmas” in the 21st century is all of those things at once. That’s just the messy reality of a centuries-old tradition.
I ask that people keep those different aspects of the holiday clear in their own minds. There is nothing “wrong” with any of them. A loud, noisy celebration in the midst of dark days? Live it up—if you so choose! “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!” Enjoy the family gatherings and festivities, the nostalgia of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” (even if you’ve never actually *eaten* a chestnut roasted on an open fire). They can be good and beautiful. But they’re not the same as Jesus. They’re cultural ways of celebrating a lot of mixed up things.
As you point out, the cultural aspects of the holiday do often make life harder for many of your fellow humans who aren’t wealthy, or happy, or healthy, or free. As someone with debilitating illnesses and a meager budget, I opt out of the *cultural* aspects of Christmas because of that. The weight of expectation to look and act a certain way, to pretend to a health and wealth I don’t have, to be *inauthentic and untrue* to the reality of my life is astonishing. It is made heavier by the *emotional blackmail of religious obligation,* as if these cultural celebrations are somehow necessary to celebrating the birth of Jesus, which can actually be done without snowmen, sleighbells, reindeer, or a 5-course dinner.
Again: there is nothing wrong with snowmen, sleighbells, reindeer, and dinners. May everyone (who wishes to) enjoy them. They are not evils. As someone who finds them to be a burden, though, I object to being pressured—repeatedly, every year—to be false to my own life, to live a lie, to embrace what is essentially toxic positivity (all of which I think might actually *be* evil), for 10 percent of the year because people have conflated those things with celebrating Jesus. And I object to having people commit pity at me because my reality—in which all my needs are met, which is glorious and deserving of thanks—doesn’t look “Christmas-y” enough. There is no reason for anyone who is abled or happy or financially comfortable to feel guilty about enjoying what they have. I would like to enjoy what I have, too, without pretending it is more “in the name of Jesus.”
Because Christianity has conflated cultural tradition with Jesus’ birth, marginalized Christians who opt out of cultural traditions that don’t serve us (in the culture that doesn’t value us) are seen as judgmental or austere in our non-participation in ways that we wouldn’t be if we were, say, Islamic or Hindu. What if we’re just honoring the “mess” of our lives, so Jesus—Immanuel—can come be with us AS WE ARE? Is there no extravagant joy, no freedom in that??
I do believe that the *cultural* holiday as it is celebrated puts the happy, healthy, and well-off in the center of the festivities. And yes, I believe very strongly that this should give the person who wants to celebrate Jesus’ birth *in the same holiday* pause. Jesus’ ministry was about putting the people who were last first, and the first last. He *preferred* the company of the people on the margins to the people who “belonged.” He sought them out not to commit charity at them, but to hang out with them—to carouse with them—and love them *in* their mess—not drag them out of it to a middle class dinner. He thought they understood something about the Realm of Love that others didn’t—he blessed them in their poverty of spirit, in their mourning. “Yours is the Realm of Love. You will inherit the earth. You will be comforted.”
What did Jesus see that we don’t? Can our religion celebrate Jesus’ birth by learning to see through Jesus’ eyes? Can we rejoice while seeking humility? Can we be extravagantly joyful at the immense gift of love without twisting others’ lives to match our *expressions* of joy? Can we seek out the margins *in poverty of spirit* to discover the Realm of Love there?
Again, I want to reiterate: everyone should celebrate all the good things they want to. Enjoy holidays that celebrate light, family, nostalgia, idealism. Just please don’t conflate them unquestioningly with Jesus. Maybe call them something besides Christmas. I hope I will bear witness to this to my dying day: any holiday that makes life harder for people on the margins—the people Jesus came to serve—is by definition anti-Christ.
Ouch! I felt a bit attacked by this comment, like your command to “not drag them out of it to a middle class dinner.” Oof. Or judgment that those of us who celebrate lavishly are wrong to connect this with Jesus. Still, I hear the pain here—of the burden many feel by heavy societal expectations at Christmas. As I wrote, there is a lot broken with how we celebrate the holidays, as there is brokenness with many things in this world. There is much room to make all we do more aligned with Love. There is something though to receiving and giving that has nothing to do with pity and everything to do with overflowing love. Something maybe to explore in another post.
As the friend who has sworn off Christmas, I would like to respond, and I hope this will be a fruitful counterpoise, in the same way that your post, Michele, has been a fruitful counterpoise to the rant I poured out at you.
I’d like to clarify the cause of my objection. It’s not to the *secularization* of Christmas, per se, but to the way multiple celebrations with different goals have been so mixed together that we can’t see clearly enough to separate the pieces. For example, the day also has European, pagan roots celebrating the northern hemisphere’s return to light. (Trees, wreathes, holly, ivy, ornaments—all pagan. This is not judgmental, just historical.) It is a family holiday—in the US, a nice “bookend” to Thanksgiving, a chance to splurge on festivity in the darkest days before resetting the stops on New Year’s. It is a sentimental holiday, a day for nostalgia and idealized goodwill (which owes a great deal to Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol). It is a commercial holiday, which feeds our gargantuan, capitalist economy. And it is a day to celebrate the birth of incarnate love in our world. “Christmas” in the 21st century is all of those things at once. That’s just the messy reality of a centuries-old tradition.
I ask that people keep those different aspects of the holiday clear in their own minds. There is nothing “wrong” with any of them. A loud, noisy celebration in the midst of dark days? Live it up—if you so choose! “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!” Enjoy the family gatherings and festivities, the nostalgia of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” (even if you’ve never actually *eaten* a chestnut roasted on an open fire). They can be good and beautiful. But they’re not the same as Jesus. They’re cultural ways of celebrating a lot of mixed up things.
As you point out, the cultural aspects of the holiday do often make life harder for many of your fellow humans who aren’t wealthy, or happy, or healthy, or free. As someone with debilitating illnesses and a meager budget, I opt out of the *cultural* aspects of Christmas because of that. The weight of expectation to look and act a certain way, to pretend to a health and wealth I don’t have, to be *inauthentic and untrue* to the reality of my life is astonishing. It is made heavier by the *emotional blackmail of religious obligation,* as if these cultural celebrations are somehow necessary to celebrating the birth of Jesus, which can actually be done without snowmen, sleighbells, reindeer, or a 5-course dinner.
Again: there is nothing wrong with snowmen, sleighbells, reindeer, and dinners. May everyone (who wishes to) enjoy them. They are not evils. As someone who finds them to be a burden, though, I object to being pressured—repeatedly, every year—to be false to my own life, to live a lie, to embrace what is essentially toxic positivity (all of which I think might actually *be* evil), for 10 percent of the year because people have conflated those things with celebrating Jesus. And I object to having people commit pity at me because my reality—in which all my needs are met, which is glorious and deserving of thanks—doesn’t look “Christmas-y” enough. There is no reason for anyone who is abled or happy or financially comfortable to feel guilty about enjoying what they have. I would like to enjoy what I have, too, without pretending it is more “in the name of Jesus.”
Because Christianity has conflated cultural tradition with Jesus’ birth, marginalized Christians who opt out of cultural traditions that don’t serve us (in the culture that doesn’t value us) are seen as judgmental or austere in our non-participation in ways that we wouldn’t be if we were, say, Islamic or Hindu. What if we’re just honoring the “mess” of our lives, so Jesus—Immanuel—can come be with us AS WE ARE? Is there no extravagant joy, no freedom in that??
I do believe that the *cultural* holiday as it is celebrated puts the happy, healthy, and well-off in the center of the festivities. And yes, I believe very strongly that this should give the person who wants to celebrate Jesus’ birth *in the same holiday* pause. Jesus’ ministry was about putting the people who were last first, and the first last. He *preferred* the company of the people on the margins to the people who “belonged.” He sought them out not to commit charity at them, but to hang out with them—to carouse with them—and love them *in* their mess—not drag them out of it to a middle class dinner. He thought they understood something about the Realm of Love that others didn’t—he blessed them in their poverty of spirit, in their mourning. “Yours is the Realm of Love. You will inherit the earth. You will be comforted.”
What did Jesus see that we don’t? Can our religion celebrate Jesus’ birth by learning to see through Jesus’ eyes? Can we rejoice while seeking humility? Can we be extravagantly joyful at the immense gift of love without twisting others’ lives to match our *expressions* of joy? Can we seek out the margins *in poverty of spirit* to discover the Realm of Love there?
Again, I want to reiterate: everyone should celebrate all the good things they want to. Enjoy holidays that celebrate light, family, nostalgia, idealism. Just please don’t conflate them unquestioningly with Jesus. Maybe call them something besides Christmas. I hope I will bear witness to this to my dying day: any holiday that makes life harder for people on the margins—the people Jesus came to serve—is by definition anti-Christ.
Ouch! I felt a bit attacked by this comment, like your command to “not drag them out of it to a middle class dinner.” Oof. Or judgment that those of us who celebrate lavishly are wrong to connect this with Jesus. Still, I hear the pain here—of the burden many feel by heavy societal expectations at Christmas. As I wrote, there is a lot broken with how we celebrate the holidays, as there is brokenness with many things in this world. There is much room to make all we do more aligned with Love. There is something though to receiving and giving that has nothing to do with pity and everything to do with overflowing love. Something maybe to explore in another post.