Posted by Helen on: 12.25.2008 /
Eliza posted these Christmas thoughts yesterday (in a comment here).
Merry Christmas! (Or, insert whatever greeting each of you uses this time of year.)
Boy, the “tag cloud” at Todd’s site is interesting - and distracting, and a bit vertigo-inducing!
I’ve been thinking more about what Christmas would look like (be like) without the trappings which don’t seem to have any relation to the actual Christmas story. (Maybe those could all be saved up for another day, close by.)
Seems like there wouldn’t be:
1) So many gifts, & all that shopping and sense of obligation.
2) Santa Claus, sled, reindeer, elves, North Pole. Stockings.
3) Candy canes, decorated cookies, fruitcakes. Big dinner featuring ham or turkey or roast beef.
4) Decorated trees. Wreaths. Poinsettas. Misteltoe. Yule logs.
5) Snow motifs - snowmen, snowflakes, dreaming of a white Christmas.
6) Many traditional Christmas carols. Bells. Muzak in stores.
7) Christmas cards, especially those which extoll the family’s accomplishments that year.
8) A federal holiday.
What would a celebration of the birth of Jesus & “the Christmas story” feature?
I’ve been mulling this over; Excuse my literalness over the features of the Christmas story, but that’s all I have to go on:
a) Quiet, reflective celebration amidst family & church? On Christmas eve, or evening? A very small meal, or even fasting for one night? (no room in the inn…what would Mary & Joseph have had to eat?)
b) A few small but “precious” gifts…for Jesus (what would that mean)? for the church? for young children?
c) Visits to, and meaningful help for, people who are staying in “the stable”, that is who are living places that most people don’t live on purpose - the homeless, people in shelters, people in tents, refugees?
d) Visits to, and meaningful help for, pregnant women and women with newborns, in difficult circumstances? Shelters, jail, poverty, etc?
e) Protection for people (esp. children) who are at risk of being targeted & killed by their government? (Obviously not a one-day effort, I know.)
…and then, pardon me, but these less serious ideas come unbidden:
- a celebration of astronomy
- a celebration of IVF (one’s own chance to conceive without intercourse - OK I know that one is really lame, and anyway that should be done 9 months before Xmas)
- a celebration of Middle Eastern kings
OK, it’s time for bed. Once again, merry christmas to all!
Comment by: Helen
1Eliza, I have to admit I like Todd’s tag cloud - I just added that to my personal blog.
Thanks for sharing your Christmas thoughts. Have you seen the Advent Conspiracy site, which is about replacing consumption with compassion at Christmas? Some of the thinking behind it seems similar to yours.
And, merry Christmas to you too :)
Comment by: Eliza
2Helen - I haven’t checked out Advent Conspiracy yet - will do so!
Later last night, I stumbled across 12/24/2008 entries on Craigslist, of people looking for volunteer opportunities for Christmas Day. A few of them wrote that they were sad & lonely, as why they wanted to find something to do on 12/25. :-(
A few shelters had posts under the same entry, saying they had plenty of volunteers to serve meals, but could use volunteers for other tasks (less desirable tasks, it seemed, and maybe more solo, too) like cleaning. Also, several had openings for 12/24 fundraising efforts, which IMO doesn’t feel so Christmas-y.
Seems like Christmas might be a good day for some relatively centralized effort to draw people together in social volunteerism, esp. those who won’t be gathering with family etc.
Comment by: Jason Horton
3I’m not sure that it’s possible to discard the secular celebration of Christmas and leave only the Christian version. Early Christians adopted so many other faith’s myths and celebrations and incorporated them that there isn’t much of Christmas that is purely Christian. Even the nativity story has adoptions from other stories.
As a mental exercise though it is interesting to try.
OK, if I remember correctly there was some travel involved, trouble with homelessness, some charity offered, a birth, some animals, some shepherds, some rich geezers and some gifts.
It is impractical for people to travel on the same day but maybe a tradition of visiting relatives could come out of this hypothetical Christmas. Oh, hang on, doesn’t that happen anyway? Perhaps it would just be more important.
Charity might be more important, certainly for the homeless. Generally people aren’t willing to open up their homes to strangers but perhaps shelters would get more funding or it could become a tradition for communities to fund accommodation for those in need. It’s an interesting idea that each street of, say 50 houses, could each contribute 2% of their income to own and maintain a house for travellers or homeless people to live in at least temporarily. Perhaps Christmas would be a time to visit the residents with gifts and food.
I’m not sure how birth could be celebrated differently that it is now. The tradition of gift giving for newborns is already common throughout much of the world and it would be a shame to take that away and confine it to December 25th.
One thing that doesn’t feature much in the current Christmas tradition is animals…except eating them. It’s probably my own bias as a long time vegetarian but wouldn’t it be great if we spent Christmas honouring animals and the contribution they make to human civilization. We are animals ourselves and it would be good to acknowledge our shared kinship rather than exploiting them for a bigger and often wasteful feast.
Comment by: Amy Black
4Wow, I love your ideas about focusing on other parts of the Christmas story, like helping pregnant girls in need or refugees. Hmm, that especially makes sense since Mary and Joseph supposedly relocated to Egypt to escape Herod’s genocide.
I have a special place in my heart for refugees because a friend of mine fled Burma and came here as a refugee.
Comment by: Eliza
5Helen, it took me a while due to distractions around the Winter Holiday ;-) but I’ve now looked at the Advent Conspiracy site - obviously it’s aimed at Christians, no surprise there, but I am surprised at how little it asks/suggests! Give one less gift. Spend more time, with suggestions including baking Christmas cookies. (And taking the kids sledding, which is great family time but still doesn’t get to the meaning of Christmas, IMO.)
It looks like they feel they have to ease people into the idea of doing something different with Christmas.
Does this type of change work, if approached one small step at a time??
Comment by: Peter Walker
6My parents and sister agreed not to exchange gifts this year. Money is tight and my dad was recently laid off of Hewlett Packard. I think it was a great opportunity to look beyond the consumerism, stress and distracted chaos of the Christmas holiday. Instead, it remained the same awkward, high stress event it always is at their house: my mother scowled most of the day.
We usually spend Christmas at my in-laws but bad weather kept us away. There are always young children there, and it seems a simpler, more joyful occasion. This year, they didn’t exchange presents either - except for a humorous White Elephant exchange. Over the phone, we heard the same laughter and spirit we always experience when we’re there. Priorities are hard to change, but for some folks, they were right all along.
Comment by: Elaine
7Eliza - you asked
Everything I have ever read or experienced tells me that this is how change occurs for most of us. Trying to make a dramatic change usually results in failure and reverting back to old ways. Yes, there are exceptions to this - but they are exceptions.
For me, I have been gradually moving away from the “presents” mentality for a while - and have slowing been influencing other family members.
One big step we took was to tell our siblings to not buy us a gift, but to take the money and donate it to our favorite charity. The next year they joined us, and now, we pool our money and take turns picking the charity each year. That is much more satisfying and beneficial.
Having said that, I do think our current economic situation is causing people to re-examine how they spend their monies. So, it could be a catalyst for change. Those don’t come along very often.
For me it goes back to the adage, if I want change, I have to start with me. If I change how I interact with the world, the world has to change how it interacts with me.
I agree with others who have said, Christmas is not just a Christian holiday. And, so many of the customs of Christmas come from other traditions, it would be hard to separate them.
So, what’s with the Happy New Year thing?
Comment by: Seren
8You’re original description, Eliza, sounds much more like a medieval Christian Christmas. Advent was traditionally a time of fasting and earnest praying. I’m not sure that Christmas itself was much of a celebration in the Church. All the fun stuff you put in the “to go” list are northern European folk stories and traditions, with a Victorian spin put on them.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
9I dont think Jesus would want us to celebrate a specific day - knowing what humans tend to do with Holy Days and all - it just doesnt fit how I picture him. But I am defintiely projecting onto him (maybe)
I think Christmas is basically an insult to the heart of Jesus message- Give gifts to those who already have more than they need- Add lots of stress through “fake caring” - It only serves to continue to co opt Jesus into the religion business - where the rules are as long as you “talk like” you are being meaningful (even though I spent $300 on you I really meant it as a gift to Jesus) it counts.
I really think God ignores all the holiday hoopla and waits until his people are sober again around Jan 5th and starts trying to get their attention about the big stuff
Have fun with this Helen- this is my Xmas present to you
Comment by: Jason Horton
10Jim, you might be interested in the similarity of opinion you share with Oliver Cromwell’s parliament (Godly) party who banned the celebration of Christmas. Such a holy celebration, it was felt, should be returned to a state where people thought about the birth of Jesus rather than ate and drank too much. In the US the Separatists (Puritans) banned Christmas celebrations in 1659. Apparently it had too many Pagan overtones. The ban in Massachusetts lasted for 22 years.
I suppose that you have that cultural background that grew from Puritan beginnings to draw from. I wonder how much we are influenced by our heritage in celebrating Christmas. For me it is entirely secular, I know only two people who attend church at Christmas so church services are something of an oddity. I have a Jehovah’s Witness friend who essentially isolates himself from the world in December to avoid the Christmas hubbub and a Hindu friend who thinks the whole thing is hilarious as she gets a day off work for no reason (in her view).
Comment by: gecko
11I don’t know, I like giving gifts. There’s always something small (and if it’s only a tea-egg that has holes small enough to hold back the finest tea-leave-dust) that shows others that I think about them and like them.
I like writing Christmas cards, as this is a time where I remember people I like and I haven’t heard from for a while. And I like getting some as well, of course. That its kind of institutionalized doesn’t bother me, because at least I need this kind of pressure, otherwise I wouldn’t write, perhaps.
I like decorating our home because I like decorating as such and there are so many nice things we have now for years.
I like singing Christmas-songs, the old classic ones like “Silent Night”. Most of them (in German at least) are very old Church songs and there are lots of thoughts and insights in there I haven’t thought of for a long time. And I like to talk with our children about Christmas, the story, the backgrounds and the songs. And I’ll never forget that moment when our two older ones all at once started singing “Happy Birthday, dear Jesus”… when they were 6 and 4 years old.
I like traditions because they hold together young and old. But I must say here that we in our family change details of it now and then so that there’s something for everybody. And I really think that even small kids can learn to stand back for somebody else’s benefit now and then.
And I like this time between Christmas and New Year as a break from everyday life and stress.
Comment by: Helen
12Jim, thanks for the Xmas present :)
Jason, I know more Jewish people than Hindus and Muslims - they also get a day off work for no reason. Someone told me it’s traditional for Jewish people to go to the movies on Dec 25.
gecko, I like many of the traditions also.