A Holiday Proposal
I’m taking a break from working on Christmas letters to type this. Between the signing, folding, and stuffing my forearm feels like I’ve developed a repeitive motion injury, and I am only a little over half way through our 110 recipients! I suppose typing isn’t going to make my arm feel any better, but at least it’s a change of pace.
The other day, I said something to Tony along the lines of…”Christmas should be separated into two holidays — one for the Christian rememberance of Christ’s birth, and the other for all the modern, consumeristic celebrations most of the world associates with Christmas.”
He asked me if I had gotten the idea from an NPR “All Things Considered” commentary along a similar vein. As it turned out, I hadn’t heard it, but I went and found it in their archives and gave it a listen. The guy had a good point, but he was more altruistic in his ideas.
I, on the other hand, would just like to enjoy the commercialism of Christmas with out the guilt. You hear it every year — slogans like, “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “Don’t take the Christ out of Christmas.” We as Christians are urged to focus on spiritual aspects of the holiday and to leave the commercialism behind to a certain degree to have a holiday more true to the original meaning.
Each year I feel a slight twinge of guilt about how much I enjoy red and green candies, cartoonish snowmen, cheesy holiday music, buying gifts, baking cookies, attending parties (wishing I had “real” parties to go to where you dress up in fancy clothes), decorating the Christmas tree, and even a little bit of Santa Claus…though Tony and I both agree that the modern tradition of parents pretending that Santa brings the toys and really lives at the North Pole, only for kids to later discover the parents weren’t telling the truth is a bit ridiculous.
None of those things have any direct connection to the Christian meaning of the season, except some of the cheesy holiday music. I can easily ignore the Christain side of Christmas all together, except for a few messages at church and maybe going to a Christmas eve service if I am lucky enough for it to work into the family celebrating schedule.
A week or two ago I had been wracking my brain trying to think of ways to bring more of the Christian meaning of Christmas back into the celebration, when I decided the ideal solution was to have two holidays. The secular side of Christmas is so not conducive to the spiritual side of Christmas and it’s hard for them to coexist. The secular side is all about hustle and bustle while the spiritual side is about reflection and rememberance.
I know this is wishful thinking, and that I probably really will have to find ways for the two sides of Christmas to coexist with one another in my life and the lives of my family. But it’s certainly nice to dream a little of a day when enjoying snowmen and Santa and decorated trees could have a day all its own.