We can see the vestiges of Christmas's pre-Christian roots in many of our holiday traditions. We know the Romans exchanged gifts and made merry during their winter Saturnalia. Pagan Scandinavia's Midwinter observance was known as the Yuletide, and was a heavy influence on our modern Christmas. Yuletide gave us the Christmas tree, the Yule log, and wassailing. Even in modern parlance, Yule is all but synonymous with the season. And to this day, Jul is the Scandinavian word for Christmas.
When it first crossed Pagan Europe, Christianity was a more fluid species of evangelism than the iron-fisted fire and brimstone we see today. It seeped into cultures by nimbly adapting to native expectations. It insinuated itself into existing traditions and familiar mythology. It evolved according to the needs of the locals. They were already celebrating the birthday of the Sun. Insisting it was also the birthday of the Son was only a rather modest rebranding. Keep your greenery and lights and music and add this sacred story to your holiday lore.
But during the Reformation, it wasn't the atheists or the Pagans attacking Christmas. It was the Puritans. That devout faction denounced Christmas revels as little more than Papist hedonism. To the stark Puritans, Christmas feasts and decorations and music were all seen as a repugnant display of ungodly excess. They detested it, and banned it; and their reasons were strictly religious.
Not only was Christmas not always Christian. It wasn't always American. Our founding fathers looked down on it as an essentially British tradition, and as such, a tradition they had little interest in preserving. Knowing full well that they'd be unprepared for it, George Washington attacked the Hessians on Christmas. He would not hesitate to exploit this sacred observance in order to shed his enemies' blood. Yes, Virginia, George Washington didn't give a reindeer's arse about Christmas.
And I say all this only to say that I do give a bit of a reindeer's arse about Christmas. Though it certainly does turn my stomach to hear a certain devout crowd jealously fighting for their interpretation of the holiday's auspices. I hate the insinuation that there is a concerted effort to neuter this inherently Christian holiday of its inherently Christian significance. Because the simple fact of the matter is that it has never been an entirely Christian holiday, and Christians themselves haven't always cared so much for it.
Not to let the atheists off the hook. And I don't mean the ones who simply don't believe in a supernatural higher power. I mean the ones who deeply believe in not believing, with all the fervor of a Cromwellian zealot. The ones who claim offense to even hear the word Christmas (which strikes me as a profoundly meta superstition), because there's nothing really at stake, is there? I mean it's one thing to strive to purge Creationism from the public curriculum. It's another to strive to purge any remotely theistic vestige from a multi-thousand year old cultural vocabulary. To wit, as someone who doesn't believe in Thor, I could struggle to rename Thursday as 5day, but it'd be an impossible fight with an unspeakably pointless goal.
At the end of the day, I'm rather fond of Christmas, exactly how it is. I like the big Pagan tree in the living room right beside the old crèche. I like the thousand year old elven saint with the Coca-Cola red overcoat. I like it all. Christmas is a storyteller's holiday. It's an intersection of histories and legends. It's a mongrel child of contradicting gods and traditions. It's old and it's new. It's spiritual and it's secular. It's heavy with stories, the blood of human culture, and that's what I love about it. Not only that, it's a season where people make some shred of an extra effort to tolerate one another, and whatever the reason, it's good enough.
- Travis
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