Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Happy Holidays

Happy New Year
I'm thinking about Christmas, but I haven't come to a final conclusion.


I recently saw some statistics.  Something like 90% of people surveyed indicated that they celebrated Christmas.  Including people who also said they weren't religious.  I think that's a good thing.  Although it's not exactly clear what they meant by celebrated - maybe they included having a day or two off from work??
On the other hand, something like 80% thought Christmas was too commercialized.  Hmmm.


I have always enjoyed Christmas, even during the period of my life when I wasn't particularly religious.  But I do think that there are two sides to Christmas . . . and they sometimes overlap.  To me, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, most decorations, exchanging gifts and writing to distant friends are all part of the "secular" side of Christmas.  You don't need to be religious to take part.  You can do these things if you are Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, some other major religion, atheist or even non-sectarian.


As an aside, I sent a Christmas card to my cousin Jeannine.  (Cousin once removed, to be technical.  My aunt was her grandmother.)  The card I got from her with newsletter was not much different from other cards.  But it was clearly a New Year's card, and it arrived during the last week of December.  Definitely part of the secular side.  Similarly, my friend Sarah is of the Jewish persuasion, and her holiday cards (now e-mails) are traditionally done the day after Thanksgiving.


As to the more religious side of Christmas, a few thoughts occur to me.


I do have an aversion to the term "Black Friday."  I guess I'm old-fashioned, I think of black days as bad news, such as a crash in the stock market, or declaration of war.  Even more, I dislike the emphasis that commercial interests put on Black Friday as a celebration of greed.  And the stories of crowds so intent on getting a bargain that they trample one another.  Yet that's my personal reaction, apparently a lot of people disagree with me about it.


But I do struggle with the question of whether Christmas needs to be more religious.  I wish the selection of cards that actually say "Merry Christmas" was better.  And I was delighted to see that the Church Christmas Party had an opportunity for the children to be photo'd with a manger scene.  So much better than a Santa Claus, in my opinion.


Still, somehow I feel that the religious side of Christmas is very personal.  This aspect of Christmas is best done in a family setting, and with our brothers and sisters at church.   If it's not religious enough, who should we blame but ourselves?
And furthermore . .


If we make it more specifically a religious holiday, what does that do to those people not of our faith?  Shouldn't they also have the opportunity to enjoy "Glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people"?