There was this club meeting in grad school I recall pretty vividly. I was secretary and we were plotting out activities for the year. "Hey," I said, as I do, "Why don't we participate in the Christmas parade and do up a float as all the characters from 'A Christmas Carol?'" (We were an English student honor society, so that seemed appropriate.) To which the president looked at me condescendingly sideways and said, "Sean: not everybody's a Christian." And me: "Yeah, I know. I'm not one myself."
This started a long ridiculous conversation where I had to explain that just because you don't believe in the literal existence of the Judeo-Christian god, that doesn't mean you reject the cultural importance of the holiday…or that you are resentful toward people who do believe…or that you want to yield your ability to participate in it. But that float just wasn't going to happen, fun as it would have been, b/c this multicultural lit specialist got in her head that acknowledging and celebrating Christmas would be offensive to anyone who wasn't a Bible thumper, and that was that.
A few years later when the trope "War on Christmas" became all the rage amongst reactionaries, it was clear to me that this well-meaning but naive lady with the toe-deep understanding was the straw man who had alley-oop'd the slam dunk that right-wing pundits and their parrot-constituents were shoving down all our throats. They took her to be the spokesperson for people like me, and painted us all in the same brush.
But newsflash: I don't have stats, but there are a good many people who are not believers, but still enjoy Christmas.
I really like it b/c I have such good memories of childhood. It was a holiday--things broke for a little while from standard operating procedure and different-type stuff happened--lots of different-typed stuff!
Christmas plays were a lot of fun. Sometime it was school, but in most cases it was church, using some loosely-woven narrative scenario to set kids up in a nativity scene. I was always "The Narrator," reading some mashup of the Matthew and Luke versions. (Remember: in the southeast in the 1980s, kids that could both read well and went to church were at a premium, so my spot was perennially safe.) You'd practice it for a few weeks and nail it, and it was a good rush going into Christmas, and really, there's no way to jack up the crowd-pleasing appeal of kids reading scripture and dressed up like angels, shepherds, and wise men.
Through church, we'd also head out and go caroling once a year. We'd show up at folks' houses and sing to them. It was a fun and happy thing. I wonder what it felt like for the audience…admittedly, if people showed up randomly at my house and started to sing to me, it would initially freak me out, but after the shock subsided, I'd probably rather like it.
I love decorating a tree, be it with elegant-posh ornaments or gaudy toy-like pieces. Some of my favorite ornaments are the wooden 1960s Japanese knock-off Snoopy ornaments that remain from my childhood…battered by years and two kids playing with them carelessly, they hold a link to us as we were all those years ago, Mama, Renita, Sean, joined together, sometimes listening to Christmas music, sometimes not, always with some candy, working with enthusiasm and joy in our hearts until the job was done. Then there was a lull where we got older and that enthusiasm waned and Mama had to hassle us to do it and ultimately just nearly do it all herself. Now as a husband and a dad, it is a more workman-like job…have to go get the tree...is it straight? too many here, too few there; are the lights straight enough? how does it look in the dark? I still enjoy the quiet calm of being in a dimly-lit room, gazing at blinking Christmas lights on a tree and letting the mind wander a bit. You forget your cares. You imagine what your kid is going to feel like when she sees those presents, and anticipates opening them for weeks. It's a flavor you vaguely recall and savor the ghost of, and one you wouldn't begrudge her, or any child, and it sort of comes back when you see it again, through them.
As a kid, shopping inspired in me a deep sense of empathy. I had to think about another person and imagine what I could buy them that would make them happy. I wasn't always successful, but heck, I tried. Now I think of the care my mother spent trying to decipher what we wanted in a "is that your final answer" kind of way, then concocting some story as to why Santa wouldn't be able to score it, only to find on Christmas Day: hey, you got it! She got us more than she ever should have, and no doubt ran around all over trying to get things just so. Today, it's easier. I got my Christmas presents on Amazon, all of them, within an hour. Wishlists make it a safer bet you'll buy something your loved one wants, but it also sort of ruins the surprise a bit. (The kid in me still can't resist peeking, if the option is available.)
One ritual was the frenzy of Christmas Eve, when my mother would cart us around, dropping presents off to friends and relatives at the 11th hour. I tried as I could to continue this into my early adulthood, bringing presents to my childless Aunt and Uncle on Christmas Eve until one time I fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 11 pm, and still decided, dammit, this is Christmas! I can't let this stop me from giving them the benefit of my love and good cheer, and so I headed up there in a flash. For some reason, they did not share the enthusiasm I had when I showed up at midnight with two bags full of presents, and though I still did it for years after, they were always wary that one year I'd show up at midnight again and roust them from bed to open presents (sort of like a Santa-home invasion, I suppose). They are both gone now, and I must admit though I loved them dearly, I wasn't of much use to them most of the time…like with a lot of my family, there's just a gap I couldn't bridge, no matter how much I tried. But being able to do that for them for just a few years, it makes me feel like maybe somewhere deep down, they knew how much I loved them. There's really no way to know, I reckon.
My dad would be sure to come up and see us the day of, or the day after Christmas, and it was always great to seem him and some of that side of the family. With divorces in his generation, men often just cut ties with the kids from their "first marriage." I suppose it was emotionally easier to do that, and it might have been for him, but it wasn't really ever an option, b/c for my dad it was not about what was easy, but what would make his kids know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that though the living situation may be complicated and times may be fat or lean, we were the most important thing in his life. Seeing him at Christmas every year, no matter what, just drove that point home, and he was always so fun and cheerful and warm to be around. Saying goodbye was not fun, but it never is when you're parting from those you love. Even though those goodbyes often caused tears, shared or unshared, and the whole scenario was not optimal, he never shirked the effort it took to be there and make merry. Too much was at stake!
So yeah, a lot of stuff, whether it seems deep or superficial, comes up when I think about Christmas. You might not be with me all the way down the line, but hear me out; I promise I'm going somewhere with this:
Once you figure out that your attachment to religion is more out of nostalgia and wishful thinking than anything else, you have a choice: you can ignore what you know is the truth, and go back where it's comfortable. Hell, I did it one big time. That one time is all it takes, b/c you're likely going to figure out you can't fake it, and even if you could, you're lying to everyone about a fundamental part of your personality. And that's not right…may as well, to paraphrase my man Huck, stick by the truth and be damned. At least people can trust you then.
So you go the other way. You go into a land unknown. Likely, none of your relatives would have ever owned up to not believing, even if it was so, b/c there was just too much stigma attached to it, and it's lonely, and often harsh. B/c the people who die: you have to accept they're gone and you'll never see them again. And if you're sick, or old, you have to accept your best days might be behind you, lest you have the courage to seize the day no matter what your condition may be. Injustice doesn't get remediated in the hereafter, which makes it all the more cruel and less bearable. This is all quite a hard sell, with no solace other than it is how things really are, and not how you wish they were. But in the end, everything counts more and means more as a result.
So you're on your own, walking a path that is not yet completely paved. Not everything is figured out. There are no pastors to tell you what to think or do, and sure, there are a lot of books, but you have to parse them, piece them together and struggle with them to make sense. (But on the good tip, you're not beholden to any of them if they represent a line o' b.s.). Even though you'll try hard, mistakes will be made, but being authentic and true to yourself has more value than being a conformist and a liar, and patronizing people you love who still believe. And you're not a church; you don't want everyone to think and be just like you.
Time goes by. You start to figure it out. Whereas you may have initially been a reactionary against all things religious, you get to a point where you keep your distance and remain skeptical, but realize that you may be where you are, but religion did play a key role in your life. Who would you have turned out to be without that upbringing? Could there be any atheists in mainstream Western Culture without the Donatists, the Gregorian Revolution, the Protestants, the Reformers, those idealists who valued the dignity and clarity of their consciences, so much that they would stand against those who would compel them to obey, resisting them b/c they represented authority without reason and humaneness, which is in essence authority without legitimacy? You reject the literal truth of it but you cannot deny that it is your culture, and that you are partaking in some serious revisionist history if you can't acknowledge the intellectual and moral debts you owe it. (And you remember: Mao and Stalin were atheists, too, and they liked to revise history a bit themselves. You have an interest in being nothing like them, and having the humility to remember: atheism is no assurance of virtue.) Can you be maintain the very genius of which James Joyce spoke, to simultaneously ponder competing ideas in your head? Of course you can. You've already proven you can think about stuff without having to believe in it. You are called an "atheist," but to be more accurate, you are the culmination of the tradition of dissenters and truth-tellers within the Christian faith--in essence, a "Post-Christian." To turn your back on that completely is to turn your back on all the people who faced the rack, burnt at the stake, who suffered because they were excommunicated and/or branded a heretic. Nay, you owe them, and they deserve better.
And then you have kids and you wonder: what do I do now? If you were religious, there'd be a lot more resources to point you the way, but you're going down the path you chose. Will the kids suffer? Will they lack the benefits of social contexts and support others take for granted? Will religious kids pick on them for being different, as you know kids do, especially kids in the dominant culture wrt minority kids? Will they be strong enough to endure the slings and arrows life throws at them without that framework of solace? What initial disadvantages will their reticence (borne of patience), skepticism, and ability to temporarily accept uncertainty while they work to find the truth, traits that will server them so well and give them such a rich life later on, represent when put up against the "perpetually 100% certain" confidence and blind acceptance of convention and authority of some of their Christian peers? Because of your choices, there are some early advantages she'll have to yield, and some experiences she'll miss out on that you had, you know. But you know what?
Christmas ain't one of them.
B/c no matter what it is called, Christians don't own Christmas. The winter holidays existed long before that religion became dominant; do the research and you'll see the followers of Jesus just co-opted the celebrations that were already taking place so that the religion could more effectively spread and supplant those already in place. In short, Jesus isn' "the reason for the season"; he's just renting it for a while. Christmas belongs to you because you have lived it and felt is so intensely your whole life through. You get to share it, all the things that it means to you and everyone else, and even though it has Christ in the name, that's just a passing thing; it could have "Cheese Biscuit" in the name and it wouldn't matter a great deal. You get a winter holiday to take some time and celebrate love, and family, and the passage of time and mortality, and just being a human, alive and in love with life at the end of the year. We'll do it up every year and because it's a living thing, we'll make our own traditions that may or may not be passed down.
So I'll leave the rest unwritten, and we'll write it in the coming years. It'll be wild, b/c we have no script, but that's just how we roll, always has been. For now? wish me a Merry Christmas. I'll wish you one, too.
War on Christmas, my ass; I own Christmas. And so do you.
