Happy Holidays

I have a friend who claims to abhor Christmas, and goes out of her way to tell everyone how much she doesn’t care about it, how she doesn’t send out any cards and how she doesn’t buy any presents. She does it, as far as I know, out of atheism and a desire to dissociate herself from anything even remotely having to do with organized religion. Fair enough – I am a flaming atheist myself – but frankly, I think she is missing out a bit.

It’s patently obvious that for the vast majority of people, Christmas has lost all religious dimension. And, like it or not, our culture is built on a Judeo-Christian foundation, so it was natural for Christmas to evolve the way it did. Eventually, other holidays that fall conveniently during the winter season, like Hanukkah, have been added to reflect the inclusiveness our society claims to aspire to, and we’ve created the acceptably general Holiday Season. So far, so good. Question is, should we have? Someone like Christopher Hitchens would say no – it is precisely by secularizing originally religious holidays rather than eliminating them outright that we enable the insidious spread of religion into spheres of life where it does not belong. But I think there is value to celebrating a winter festival of one sort or another.

Recall that Christmas has evolved out of the pagan custom of celebrating the winter solstice. Also a religion, paganism – I know. But this is not about Thor and Freya, or Zeus and Hera. The pagans were in tune with nature far more than we are today. They paid attention to the seasons and to the way those seasons affected their daily life. And those things are well worth paying attention to in this speeding-up and heating-up world of ours. A winter festival allows us to pause and notice the cyclical nature of life, the passing of time, to remind ourselves that both the good and the bad that has passed will likely come again, for such is the nature of things. And while one can argue, successfully, that this can be done at any time, doing it around the winter solstice makes sense – it’s the deadest time of the year as far as nature is concerned. Everything that was going to die has died, and everything else is showing no signs of life yet (ok, a Euro-centric view of nature, climate and weather – you got me there). There is a reason the solar calendar, with the dead of winter serving as the beginning of a year, has caught on. I think the Japanese have it about right – whether Christian, Buddhist, Shinto, or none of the above, they celebrate the arrival of the new year as the chance to leave behind the sorrow and embrace the joy as they enter a new cycle.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and a Happy New Year!