A Christmas Letter – 2011

Merry Christmas.

Now, just because I consider myself a Christian, don’t assume I’m one of those who thinks only Christians get to celebrate these wonderful winter holidays. Folks of nearly all religions – and no religions – have been celebrating the Winter Solstice season as far back as records and myths go.

It’s a great time of year, when we celebrate that important turning of the season, when we’ve hit the depth of the short days, and the light begins to come back into the days. It’s a rare religion that doesn’t have some sort of big celebration at this time. Christianity is no exception. What modern Christians too often ignore is that our celebration on this holiday is very modern, and through the ages we’ve essentially “stolen” the celebration from the popular celebrations occurring within other religions.

Christmas wasn’t even “defined” on the Church Calendar until the 4th century, at about the same time that the Roman Church (from which western Christianity evolved) was created by the state of Rome. It was another 400 years after than until it was really “celebrated” in any way. When it was celebrated, it was essentially an effort by the Church to bring the revelry and celebration that was already occurring into a more religious context. Essentially, the Church co-opted the celebrating to evolve it into something religious. There’s a great article here that gives an excellent history.

The Puritans outlawed Christmas, as it was too “pagan” for them. The earliest Americans never celebrated Christmas at all. Even at the time of the founding of out nation, Christmas wasn’t celebrated. The first congressional session was held at the end of December, in 1789. December 25 was a regular work day that year, as it was every year. It wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that there was a push to make a big deal out of the holiday, probably pushed largely by the publishing of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” early in the century. By 1870, we decided to make it a federal holiday in this country. Even then, it wasn’t a religious push, but a secular one. Remember that there’s nothing particularly religious – certainly not Christian – about Dickens’ book, which was the motivation for all this “Christmas” stuff.

It was in the 20th century that Christmas took off as a real holiday, fueled by the  consumerism that defined American culture in the post WW2 era. As this phenomenon was growing, there was a parallel phenomenon in many Christian circles to try and “reclaim” Christmas as a Christian holiday. Those who were trying to do this reclaiming labored under the misconception that Christmas was an ancient and important Christian celebration.

Frankly, as a Christian, I’d rather folks stopped associating the holiday with Christianity. The focus on consumption and greed is truly the antithesis of the ethic that Jesus taught. There are many religions who celebrate this wonderful time of year, and can we just accept that Christianity is only one of them – a latecomer at that!

So to all my Christian friends: Enjoy the holidays, spread the cheer, celebrate as deeply as your heart wants you to. But don’t buy into the lie that “Jesus is the reason for the season”. The reason for the season is this: the darkest day of the year is past, the days will get longer now, and soon it will start to warm up. That’s GOOD reason to celebrate!

Jesus is the reason to celebrate many things, but this isn’t one of them. Enjoy the season, enjoy the good cheer, and wish Merry Christmas to everyone you know! If you want to find religion in the holiday, spend Christmas Eve at church, and find the beauty in celebrating the “return of the light” in a way that has religious meaning to us. It’s the meaning we find as Christians, but not necessarily the same meaning everyone else finds in the season.

Merry Christmas! And G-d bless us every one!

Author: Neil Hanson

Neil administers this site and manages content. View all posts by Neil Hanson