So This Is Christmas

Christmas has an interesting history, of which I am mostly ignorant. Some place its roots as far back as Saturnalia, a Roman holiday which may or may not have been about a week in length at approximately this point in the Julian calendar. This event was marked by public revelry, slaves and masters 'reversing' roles (more as a jest than in reality, naturally), and gift giving. It nearly coincides with the winter solstice, which is probably not coincidental. (One wonders why human beings are so fascinated by the regular motions of the objects in the sky and mark them with such care.) Without any historical facts to back this up, it seems to me that most cultures (selection bias: those which left some indication of their existence and culture, that is, mostly ones that became agrarian, which may explain the predominant predilection with predicting the motions of heavenly bodies by cultures that I'm aware of) have holidays (holy days right?) around this time of year. Role-playing games with interesting and well-thought out settings, I'm thinking specifically of Exalted here, mimic this trend (and make it awesome, Calibration sounds cool to me, anyway). The end of a year, or digging back further, the end of the yearly harvesting cycle, happens now. The crops are all harvested and processed, and the farmers must wait for the warm times to return. (Our agrarian past explains a lot about many of the more common elements in those agrarian cultures that we know about, including our more enduring myths about resurrection, etc.) The winter solstice marks the time from which the days start becoming longer, the sun, unconquered, returns to us. In more accessible parts of our culture, it is meant to mark a time of merriment and good will toward men. The basic underpinnings of the religious elements call for the celebration of the birth of our lord and savior.

That serves as a preface to my main thrust, however. I'm an atheist, and it's Christmas. I'm much more dedicated to atheism now than I have been in the past, which makes this time of year, shall we say, troublesome for me. But why is that? As I'm sure you have all heard, we don't celebrate Christmas properly in this country as it is. "It's too commercial", "We forgot about the reason for the season", etc. With the exception of my earlier Christmases with my fundamentalist side of the family that I no longer have any contact with (thank goodness), I've never experienced Christmas as religious event. Christmas, so it would seem, is an increasingly secular holiday. Still, the name and basic assumptions (in lay American culture, I'll say) are those of a Judeo-Christian mindset. Being fervently wished many merry christmases already by every Tom, Dick, Jose, and Harry out here in Texas left me with a quandary. On the one hand, I value the conclusions I have come to after years of personal deliberation on the subject of religion, and believe that others would benefit from sharing in my current beliefs on the matter. On the other, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change anyone's mind on the subject by pulling them up short when they 'wish me a merry christmas' by telling that "I don't celebrate Christmas because I'm an atheist, but I hope [they] enjoy [their] time off from work". In the end it just seems grinchy to pull that on people, especially because I'd probably end up delivering that with some wrong tone or other in my voice and alienating folks (though I'm sure the momentary pause and grimace before I parrot back an unenunciated 'merry christmas' doesn't do much to endear me to them either).

In the face of this, my solution is one of co-opting. A rose by any other name, right? The holiday is already waxing secular in popular culture to begin with, or so it would seem. So, rather than object to the unicorns in the christmas closet, I choose to focus my attention on those aspects of the holiday which are worthwhile. It's a bit cowardly, and not particularly original, since, apparently, lots of folks are ignoring the religious aspects of the holiday already.

The traditions of the holidays at this time of year called upon us to reflect on the year which has passed, show love to friends, family, and strangers, be joyful, and have an eye toward the coming year. These are all things that I can get behind. We celebrate the good times we have had with food and cheer. We see the year born once more and we can also take that time for a metaphorical rebirth of ourselves. Where Thanksgiving is, to my mind, a holiday focused on the abundance of good things that we can share with each other, Christmas has a  more solem feel to it. It is a holiday for the death of the year, to be followed by the birth of a new one a week later. Death, in the sense that it is used in the tarot, is more about change than _DEATH_ (scary and evil!).

So indeed, merry Christmas to everyone. May we all experience joy as we put this year to rest in good company and look forward to the positive changes we will experience in our lives in the new year.