20131203.0743

My cousin made the point--the good point-- a couple of days ago that those people who "celebrate" Christmas but claim to be atheist or, if religious, one of the many faiths other than Christianity are somewhat hypocritical.  A discussion ensued, one which is ongoing (and I probably ought to stop feeding the trolls with it), in which I note the indication of financial primacy in the holiday season (loosely Thanksgiving through the new year) and in which one of the other participants sought to impress others with superior knowledge about the pagan (or Pagan?  I am unsure.) origins of many of the "traditional" Christmas accoutrements.  (As though the other people in the discussion did not already know.  Then again, I have had the benefit of long association with an exceptional folklorist and polytheist scholar, so I suppose I have had an unfair advantage.)

I found myself annoyed by the commentary.  Aside from the implication that I do not know things that I actually do know (petty, I know), the blithe acceptance of unexamined cultural norms grates on me.  It is the kind of thing that I see too often in my students, not only the first-year folks (who might be expected not to know any better), but the upper-division students who ought to know after years in higher education that they should interrogate their beliefs and practices not only for their origins, but for their implications and their resonances.  It bespeaks an unwillingness to think, to question, to investigate, and it is only through thinking, questioning, and investigating that problems can be identified and resolved--and we have a damned lot of problems.

Take "typical" Christmas celebrations, for example.  They consist for the most part of gatherings of kith and kin, large meals, and gift exchanges--and none of these are actually about Christ, even though they are ostensibly so ("Keep the Christ in Christmas!  Boycott stores whose employees don't say 'Christmas!'").  Those who do go to a Christian church typically do so for one, perhaps two hours that week, and perhaps they put a little more in the offering plate.  They do not emulate the Christ whose birth--misplaced in the year and in time--they nominally celebrate (and I must confess my hypocrisy again because I am insufficiently good at doing so).  At best, they emulate Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior.

But I do not think that people are typically at their best; rather, I think that many pay lip-service to the Christianity of the holiday and then give their devotion to lucre.  The focus is not Christ.  It is not even family and friends.  It is on ostentatious consumption, showing that there is money to be spent and that it can be spent on things that are not vital for life.  Again, I am a hypocrite for having participated in it; I am not going to refuse to gift those close to me or to accept the gifts that they give me, and yet I claim and have claimed to be a man of faith, as do many others.  So if my cousin is right to call into question those who participate in a Christian holiday who are not Christian--and I think he is--then there are a great many of us who ought to reexamine what we do towards the end of December.