(~6 minutes to read)
December is here and the turkeys are getting nervous. The anorexic one in the corner is laughing its miniscule head off, and the gluttons among them are wishing they’d not indulged in those food supplements quite so freely.
If you accused me of fabricating those turkey thoughts, I’d plead guilty. Of course they have no concept of the meaning of Christmas; but it seems they’re not alone.
As someone who’s allergic to shopping at the best of times, I can sympathise a little with those nervous turkeys, although it’ll only be half a day or so of my life I’ll lose to the pressures of consumerism; the turkey’s devotion to our Christmas Day feeding frenzy is a little more all-consuming than mine.
What follows could very easily become a rant, and I could be setting myself up for a lot of religious hate mail, but I’ll try to keep it (relatively) light and entertaining.
(Note: I have frequently put words like “Christmas” and “Christian” in quotation marks. This is done intentionally in order to show that I don’t entirely believe the word to be appropriate.)
Disclosure. I’m a former churchgoer in the Anglican/Lutheran Christian faith. Never devout, I lost faith for good when the pastor was asked to leave.
I struggle with the season that people call “Christmas”. Santa’s popularity ratings are orders of magnitude greater than the person who should be at the centre of Christians’ Christmas. Christmas itself starts on December 25th in the Christian calendar. People of many denominations as well as people with no religious affiliation participate in “Christmas”. Yet attempts to adopt an inclusive, non-faith-specific name for the season that starts in November (or even October!) are met with resistance and hostility.
Cockney WASPs
Those who’ve read my past articles will remember that I was raised in the dilapidated Victorian row housing just east of London. When I was born, pretty much everyone in my area was some flavour of white Anglo-Saxon protestant (there were Jews and Roman Catholics kids in my school: I know this because they didn’t attend daily assembly), and Christian holidays were observed un-self-consciously. Most kids lumped Santa, sleighs, trees, tinsel, Jesus, the wise men, and Bing Crosby into the “Christmas” pigeonhole back then; for them “Christmas” was a word that encompassed everything that went on in the run-up to December 25th and beyond.
The Melting Pot Gets Warm
Immigration from Britain’s former colonies really started in earnest in the 1950s – initially from Africa and the West Indies, and then, in the 1960s, from the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere. The new Britons’ presence started to change the “faithscape” – high streets and nascent shopping areas were being frequented by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and people of other faiths. What they thought of “Christmas” I never thought to ask, but I suspect that some, perhaps in an effort to integrate, were swept along by the gift-buying and Santa worshipping, just like their “Christian” neighbours.
Mrs. H. and I married in 1979, and we moved nearer to the edge of the Greater London area; in the late 80’s we moved further out, to a semi-rural bedroom community. Both these moves gained us a little more space, but in doing so diluted the multi-cultural mix in our neighbourhoods. We continued with the Christian-centric holiday happenings; however, this was the “kid period” in our lives, and we became increasingly conscious of the juggernaut that was commercialism – having kids will do that for you!
We still called it “Christmas”.
A Whole New Melting Pot
In 1994, we became immigrants ourselves when we moved to Canada. Commercialism had been growing in the UK, but hadn’t prepared us for the sudden jump to North American levels – we were even introduced to “Christmas in July”, a tradition that goes back to the 1930s. I’d experienced “Christmas in September” in a hardware store in England – Christmas music being played – but a manufactured, separate event that unashamedly cashes in on the commercialism surrounding the “Christian” celebration? People in the southern hemisphere are used to seeing Santa sweating it out in December (I hope that deodorant is part of Santa’s toolkit there) – I guess “Christmas in July” gives us northern hemisphereans (or is it hemispherites? Surely not hemispheroids…) a flavour of an antipodean “Christmas”. But that’s not really the reason for “Christmas in July”, is it…
I think “Christmas in July” may have been a turning point for me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. For several years after moving to Canada, I was still part of the school of thought that insisted that “Christmas” continue to be called Christmas – why should we give up our culture in order to appease those who have brought their own cultures and celebrations to Canada?
Recently though, I’ve realized that people are confusing commercial “Christmas” with Christian Christmas.
And that’s what this article is really about.
Not What It Says on the Label…
Rather than defend “Christmas” against the onslaught of “politically correct” multi-cultural attack, I’m surprised that Christians aren’t incensed by Christmas being subverted by rampant commercialism and consumerism. Christmas starts on December 25th (in the Eastern Orthodox faith, it starts on December 25th according to the Julian calendar – the rest of us use the Gregorian calendar). Christians should be demanding a different name for the commercial run-up to Christmas.
Other faiths have their own celebrations at this time of year. Hindus and Sikhs have Diwali (Festival of Lights) in October or November; some Hindus in the USA now observe a new holiday called Pancha Ganapati from December 21st to 25th. The Jewish festival of Hanukkah is celebrated in December. Muslim holidays are set according to a twelve lunar month calendar rather than a solar calendar, and at present, their major holidays don’t align with Christmas. Buddhists have Bodhi Day (Day of Enlightenment) on December 8th, and the Pagans have Yule. Many argue that the date for Christmas was set in order to usurp the Pagan traditions. Certainly, traditions such as the mistletoe and the yule log are borrowed from paganism. It might be that the twelve days of Christmas originates from the twelve days that the Celts believed the sun stood still for.
Even Pastafarians have a holiday in December; they call it “Holiday”.
In the secular world, there are many celebrations in the October to December period. They include Halloween (originally a Pagan/Christian event), Guy Fawkes Day in the UK, and American Thanksgiving.
In Canada, there are many ice- and snow-related festivals in January, February and March.
And of course, there is the substantial secular consumerism that’s attached itself limpet-like to Christmas.
…so Let’s Re-label It
To me, as a former “Christian”, the foregoing all represents the tip of an iceberg of a compelling case for adopting a new name for winter celebrations. Any new name would need to be secular since it would encompass both secular celebrations and holidays of many faiths. Such a name would therefore be inclusive rather than exclusive. Most importantly, there need be no single name for it. For example, “Winterfest” might work well in the northern hemisphere, but “Summerval” might be a better appellation in the southern hemisphere.
Perhaps someone with a better education than mine, or a wider vocabulary than mine could come up with alternative secular names.
Imagine a seasonal celebration that the vast majority of people could support. They would be free to respect and sample each other’s faith-based celebrations; they could shop for gifts unashamedly, and they wouldn’t need to feel self-conscious about having coloured lights on their houses for three months of the year. Turkey-eating could be detached from a specific date, a course of action that would make life (and death) on a turkey farm less boom-and-bust. Just imagine.
John Lennon would be proud.