Bagg: Christmas for everyone!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
In the next few weeks, families will travel long distances, give each other gifts they bought in the airport and remember why they moved across the country in the first place. Old friends will send each other novellas about the accomplishments of their children, all under the pretense of a family photo. Parents will lie to their children for weeks about a man who watches them sleep, only to spoil them with unabashed capitalist glee.
This is the American holiday known as Christmas, and I have all the love for it a Jewish atheist can...
Always nice to see an atheist who hasn't joined the War on Christmas bandwagon!
I know it's an affront to my deep cultural roots, but I'm going to say it anyway: I'd rather lick candy canes, hum along to Good King Wenceslas or Silent Night, and roast a Christmas ham than watch a Woody Allen film while eating Chinese food.
I love your writing! From one atheist to another. You are NOT alone!
As a culturally Christian atheist, I agree with you that the holiday has largely become a secular affair. My Jewish girlfriend, however, views it as something outside her own culture and resents having it forced on her as much as it is. (To be fair, I resent listening to awful Christmas carols all the time, too.)
Regardless of Christmas's religious/secular status, it seems wrong to force something on other cultures because you think it should be ubiquitously "American".
Why should I be offended by Christmas? It is, after all, a pagan holiday.
we "force the 4th of july" upon other cultures too. You know, when they live in America.
signed,
a first generation american
as a Christian, I was really hurt by this article. Christmas IS a Christian celebration! It celebrates the birth of Christ-- the day in which our Savior became man to dwell among us and offer Himself as the final sacrifice for OUR sins. Christmas is NOT just some secular, non-religiously affiliated holiday that has less to do with the manger and the shepherds than with santa and his marketable reindeer. Unfortunately, in this day and age, that's what it really has become to some people- "capitalism day." Of course, giving gifts, loving, being kind, spending time with family are all traits of the Christian celebration that should be common to all of mankind, no matter what their religious affiliation.
Oh good grief. Please, everybody, get over the knee-jerk being offended.
My Christian friend, based on the last sentence of your comment, I suspect that if you put aside your hurt for a moment or two, along with your pre-conceived (and valid) frustrations about what secular Christmas has become, you would agree with the sentiments of this article.
Hmm. I'm a semi-Jewish atheist, so theoretically I should be in this article's prime audience, but I just don't like Christmas very much. I've tried tree decorating with other families but wasn't too excited. I guess I just like being different. Plus, the Chinese food thing is fun.
Merry Christmas!