As Christmas nears, we hear more and more about “the reason for the season” and the heated debate between those who prefer to hear an innocuous “Happy Holidays” from their shopping store cashiers and those who demand a “Merry Christmas” lest they’ll be irked in their purchase of winter gloves for their niece.
At one time, Christmas was a remembrance of the birth of a poor Jewish carpenter’s son in the backwater Hebrew town of B?t Lehem.
As the early church gained followers, power and political clout toward the end of the Roman Empire, it became Christianity’s second holiest day after Easter, conveniently coinciding with winter solstice festivals of Saturnalia, Sigillaria and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun,” commonly observed by Roman citizens.
As more and more Gentiles joined the small Jewish sect and transformed it into Christianity, the Rome-based church expanded to pagan regions of Europe and beyond, and local converts incorporated their traditions into the holiday.
Santa Claus has a much longer tradition around Christmas time — he wasn’t a Victorian creation nor fabricated by the Coca-Cola company — rather, he has his roots in Germanic and Norse folklore. God-king Odin, in the guise of a blue-cloaked and bearded old man, would ride through the sky on his eight-legged warhorse Sleipnir and deliver gifts.
As fewer and fewer people attend church regularly and as Americans incorporate more world traditions into our culture, the specifics of the holiday have faded even further into obscurity.
Many people, self-declared Christians, agnostics and occasional weekend believers alike, for whom Christianity is a framework but not a lifestyle choice, no longer attend services regularly. For them, Christmas includes the once-a-year visit to the local church for carols, a sermon about being nice all year long and a candlelit farewell while singing “Silent Night.”
Then the specifics get fuzzy. There was a manger, three wise men, no room at the inn and gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a person who could pick out frankincense and myrrh from a lineup without some guidance or a Google search.
There were shepherds and angels in there somewhere, too, but the bigger point was that a boy was born in a manger beneath a star that guided them.
The holiday has been so convoluted now that the reason for it becomes much more simple, despite all the hype — it’s a reason to gather with family and celebrate our relationships to each other.
Sometimes, holidays like Christmas exist for a much simpler psychological reason — we know we need to be more generous to each other. Deep down, we all love friends and family, but having a holiday to wrap it around makes it easier to show our true colors, our deeply held love of those nearest to us without suspicion.
We all have big hearts and a selfless love for our fellow man, but wrapping it up in shiny red bow lets the rest of the world accept that fact with the same joy with which we give it.
Merry Christmas.
