saturn return to sender

I am not exactly atheist, not really agnostic, not Christian, not a practicing Buddhist. I do not self-identify with any religion, yet in the past couple of weeks I found myself decorating my house, buying presents, generally doing the American Christmas thing. I’ve been thinking about this lately, wondering whether I’m justified in all that, what the holiday is about for me, personally. Primarily, I’m just mindlessly going with the flow and meeting the expectations of the vast majority of the culture.

However, when it comes to my personal experience and choices, I am wanting to be somewhat mindful, at least a little curious, and not 100% cynical. If I’m not Christian, am I “allowed” to celebrate Christmas? If I do follow the standard American Christmas script, is that script only a shallow exercise in consumerism and gift-giving? Isn’t there supposed to be something transcendent in all of this?

Part of the problem is the labels themselves, of course. They’re imprecise. If “atheist” means that I think the TV-evangelical Christian version of the world is rubbish, then yes, I am atheist. If “atheist” means that I am a physicalist or hard-core positivist, or militantly anti-religion, then I must demur. If I’m not “Christian,” does that mean I deny any sort of special position to the historical figure of Jesus? Well, I’m not Christian, but I’m willing to accept that the person was real and—in some universal, non-exclusive sense—divine.

The labels, to me, are mostly a source of destructiveness, and rarely the cause of anything positive.

And that is something I identify with, an -ism that I can get behind: being-constructive-is-better-than-being-destructive-ism. Vague and open to interpretation, it’s true. As a system of ethics, it’s pretty gooey. I guess it’s a brand of humanism, but again, that Wikipedia article’s description gives it a bit of a too-narrow focus on the rational as the sole source of truth. I don’t feel that’s correct.

Maybe I’m a Buddhumanist. (According to google, I just coined that term, heh.)

Anyway, back to Christmas. As a child, I was all into Christmas. The lights and music and all the Christmas blah blah blah got me excited. You know, for the presents. I went to my family’s church’s (Congregational: not exactly heavy-handed) Christmas Eve service because I thought the part where everyone held a candle and they dimmed the lights was really cool. Also, my parents made me go. The “spirit” of Christmas was all well and good, but yeah, it was mostly about the presents and getting out of school. Yay Christmas!

This year, my 30th Christmas, the holiday music was instantly annoying. The decorations look plastic and tasteless. The traditions ring hollow. The parties have been fun, and I’m happy to be able to buy things for my family, but the holiday itself seems empty. I suppose I should expect as much, since I am only exposing myself to the secular/commercial side of Christmas. But then the religious side comes with too much baggage. What to do?*

Of course the trappings of Christmas were pagan before they were Christian. I’ve been pretty happy to understand the holiday as a general mid-winter observance, like one of the bazillion mid-winter festivals we humans have seen fit to create. To note the solstice is to touch the rhythm of life on this planet. That’s pretty universal, and I can dig it. Decorating with living greenery and lit candles to embrace the passage of the darkest part of winter does not feel as bizarre or creepy to me as, say, putting a plastic lighted nodding-up-and-down deer in my lawn to celebrate a figure who I believe was special, certainly, but not a god, not the son of a god, and whose message, so far as I know, did not mention plastic lighted deer.

But don’t get me wrong: I am happy to also remember a person who was by many accounts a light in the dark and to symbolically associate his birth with the winter solstice makes plenty of sense, but not to the exclusion of the many other ways of experiencing and understanding the holiday. Ways which are less clouded by politics, power, and the distinctly un-divine.

Yeah: I think the plastic lighted deer that nod up and down are creepy. I guess I am part of the liberal war on Christmas.

So, I have lots of candles, lots of boughs of evergreen. No tree. I mostly follow the American Christmas script, think santa hats at parties are fun, but it’s a mid-winter festival to me, not a Christian-appropriated mid-winter festival.

But, I am without a ceremony. I’m not big on ceremony, but I think I would appreciate some lightly-social, tasteful and not-overly-long observance of the mid-winter holiday. Something where I don’t have to sit in pews; something where participants are there because they want to be there, not because they think they ought to be there. I wouldn’t mind hearing a few thoughts of wisdom and guidance that are free of religious injunction or rhetoric. A non-religious reminder that the sacred is alive and well even in whatever guise it appears … Even in plastic lighted lawn deer.**

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.