I made it out of clay.

[kleenexwoman]

This made me laugh. I didn't know James Morrow was working for The Onion.

Question for people on my flist: If you do not identify as Christian, do you celebrate Christmas or do Christmas-y type things, like putting up a fir-tree-like-object in your house and slapping glitter and baubles all over it? If so, why?

This stems from my mom getting into a fight with one of her friends over whether Christmas trees were "holiday trees" or explicit symbols of the birth of the baby Jesus. Which leads to the question of whether the Christmas trappings--the tinsel, peppermint, stockings, nutcracker toys, polar bears drinking Coke, and all that other stuff--is really a layer of encrusted tradition around a core of pure Christianity, or whether it's a lot of beginning-of-winter cultural and religious traditions that just gravitated around each other and ended up sticking to the "Christmas" label because it was the one with the most glue.

And I have been considering this, because on one hand, it's all stuff that is identified very strongly with Christmas specifically, and celebrating Christmas specifically seems to imply that you buy the premise of the holiday, which is that it was exactly the day when baby Jesus was born and that this is something that is personally meaningful enough for you to make a big deal out of it. On the other hand, Christmas is not so much strictly a religious holiday--it's a pagan holiday that had Christianity painted on, and then gathered different observances and traditions and meanings over the centuries. Very little in the archetypical celebration of the holiday is strictly tied to religious observances (unlike Chanukah, I have to point out, which is tied to a specific historical event and has really specific traditions tied to very concrete things. Seriously, the most variation seems to be whether you eat latkes or sufganiyot.

On that tack, my favorite holiday movie, besides Nightmare Before Christmas and the Grinch cartoon, is "The Hebrew Hammer." Why? Because it's a Chanukah movie and it kicks ass, and because it really does put its finger on what Chanukah is about, despite the protagonists admitting at the end of the movie that they have no idea what the "true meaning of Chanukah" is. The whole movie is about Santa Claus's evil son trying to make sure that Christmas has a monopoly on winter holidays, and a chunk of the movie is devoted to the Hebrew Hammer and his friends exposing Jewish kids to media that shows them positive images of Jews. This is a distinctly different message from most happy Christmas movies. The message is clear--Chanukah is about resisting assimilation, whether it's forced by the Syrian king or subtly pushed by endless showings of "It's a Wonderful Life.")

Shit, where was I going with this? Anyway, what I've been thinking about is how weird it is that Christmas seems to simultaneously be a universal holiday and a Christian holiday at the same time. Easter isn't like this, even though all the sugary holidaycruft around Easter is even more clearly pagan than glittery trees and presents are--nobody just assumes that you celebrate Easter, even if you're atheist. I know self-identified pagans and atheists who do Christmas. I've known Jews who do Christmas, and it's not because they've got Christians in the family, it's because the kids like the big tree or that's when the big bonus for presents comes or everyone else does, why not?

And I'm thinking of years past when I told my mom I didn't believe in Jesus, I was Jewish, don't make me to go church, and she got mad and decided I didn't need to get presents if I didn't believe in Christmas. (I got the presents anyway. And Mom eventually calmed down and got a lot more okay about my humanist-Jewish-thing religious identification.) And I'm wondering whether making Christmas into such a universal holiday means that it just really isn't strictly a religious holiday at its core, and it'll stay as a time of lights in the darkness and presents and feasting no matter which religion latches onto it, or whether it's another way that default Christianity shapes and transforms the culture I live in.

Comments

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

They are most probably pagan, but I guess there's a legend about how some saint got mad when he encountered a bunch of druids praying to trees, and cut one down and dragged it inside to show them that the trees were not gods. Deforestation >:(

Here we kind of celebrate everything regardless of personal beliefs, because holidays are fun, and most of the time there's good food involved.
Singapore sounds like it's much more relaxed about religion. Here there are "interfaith" observances in some places, but it's unusual for people to really celebrate non-commercial holidays outside of their belief system unless they're related to someone who does.

[anivad.livejournal.com]

lol saint. XD

Yeah, we're definitely more relaxed about religion here, which is why my online exposure to the American side of it kind of terrifies me. :( Here we have churches and temples and mosques built literally side by side (there are several roads with this) and nobody really cares. Some even share buildings if they can't afford a whole one, then split the rent.

And religious holidays are celebrated by everyone because it's a holiday and holidays are awesome and it's sort of natural to want to do something remotely related to that holiday. Admittedly, this mostly involved dropping by at my next-door Muslim neighbours for food during Hari Raya. good food. We don't live there anymore though.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Some even share buildings if they can't afford a whole one, then split the rent.
That is AWESOME.
There are areas around here that have different denominations of churches side-by-side, but they're little storefront fly-by-night type places. I always wonder how many people actually go to places of worship that used to house a dry cleaning establishment.