Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas!

Interestingly, I find myself more in the spirit of Christmas now than I have been in the past few years. Each year around Christmas I find little reason to celebrate. While this year ought to be no different, I really don't have any reason not to celebrate. I haven't been feeling as depressed this year (which I mainly attribute to Cymbalta), I have found myself in the company of some truly wonderful friends, and my successes as a student outweigh my failures as a human being, so guess that is reason enough to be happy.. if only for a single day.

People have a tendency, I think, to over complicate the holiday. Some simply refuse to enjoy the music, the festivities, etc, and others want to reconsider everything as being different from the status quo conceptualization. I've heard people this year both trying to put the "Christ" back in Christmas, and I've heard people adamantly claim that Christmas is really a pagan holiday that has nothing to do with Christianity. Both sides have got it wrong as far as I'm concerned.

I don't really consider myself a Christian. But unlike many non-Christians, I am not resistant to the faithful, I do not try to subvert the status of religion in relation to my own beliefs--anymore than I try and understand how the beliefs of Christianity function within my life. We are not living in a purely Christian society, but we are not living in a society absent of Christianity, and even so, it would seem that many people who believe in "being a good person" or "doing good" believe in some sort of universal balance that is determined by the collective actions of humanity. But this is also inconsistent, because without some sort of object (God or other) to contrast "bad" from, "being a good person" is meaningless. Babies aren't good people: they put their mothers through unimaginable suffering during birth, and then are completely selfish until they develop cognitive awareness that allows them to objectively reflect on their lives.

The other belief, that Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity is also a staunch falsehood, and exactly the kind of mentality I expect a pompous pseudo-intellectual with a partially complete college education to believe in. Christmas, at least before it was swallowed by middle-class consumerism, was supposed to be about celebrating the birth of Christ. Whether or not this event, the Nativity, actually took place--whether or not it is fact--is quite irrelevant to me. What is more relevant is what "the birth of Christ" symbolizes or means. For one, a child's birth is a symbol of hope for the future. Second, Christ is a symbol of both salvation and forgiveness, both which are built into the Christian belief to offer not only absolution, but also comforts the guilty.

I think much of the anxiety, or angst, towards Christianity from non-Christians is reactionary, and fueled by the actions carried out by Christians with good intentions and ill results. This is no reason to through the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not saying that it is necessarily the "right" answer to blindly follow any faith. What I am saying is that roundly rejecting a belief paradigm because of the actions of others is not the right answer either. The reason is because people in their irrationality are driven to do illogical things that disgrace the names of the institutions they represent. People never represent only themselves, but every ideal they stand for, and if they appear foolish--the ideal appears foolish. Why is that?

So, whether or not you believe in Christianity, take the day to enjoy the Christmas season with people who are important to you, or people who you are important to. Being so contemptuous of such a superficial issue is a waste of time, and becoming emotional invested (albeit negatively) is just as energy consuming, if not more so, than indifference.