So, the daily thrust of life has kept me from blogging for awhile. With a toddler, a 7-year-old, a full-time job and a chronic disease, one doesn't get as much time as one would like to devote to blogging. However, I really wanted to get out a blog about Christmas, but since I was suffering a family bout of the bubonic plague during Christmas, I'm just getting to it now.
Let me start by saying, I love me some Christmas. I mean, I'm decking the halls by November 10th. And for a few years, I really had a mental debate going on in my head as to whether or not it was ok for me to love Christmas so much, what with me being an atheist and all. But over the past few years, I've come to peace with my merry ways.
I realized that I'm not really celebrating the religious Christmas holiday, but rather the cultural one. Christmas trees, presents, lights, and all that good stuff I love about Christmas were never really a part of the celebration of Jesus' birth until the church decided to co-op them for their own uses. Most of the traditions we celebrate every year actually have pagan origins, and the church wisely predicted that if they could integrate these things with their religion somehow, it would persuade more people to convert since they wouldn't have to give up their beloved traditions.
We have no idea when Jesus was born (if he even really existed), so celebrating his birth on December 25th is really rather arbitrary. Hence the reason we don't set up a nativity scene in our house. For me, Christmas is a lot more about being close to your family, enjoying good food, giving freely to other people, and getting some sort of warm break from the cold winter.
I always laugh when I hear people decry the "war on Christmas." As if Christmas in America is just suddenly going to be bombed into oblivion. We love Christmas. It's part of our cultural heritage. Would I like to see the "Christ" taken out of Christmas? Certainly. But that doesn't mean I want to quit celebrating it. I just want to celebrate the things that really matter about the season, like the happy-dance my children do when they open a particularly good present, our once-a-year cheesy egg bake that reminds me of my grandma, and watching the "A Christmas Story" marathon on TNT. Is that really so wrong?
