REASON FOR THE SEASON

The whole world seems a little bit wonky at the moment.  We head toward the holiday season unsure of how that will look by December 25^th.  Will we be able to celebrate with our families?  Or will 2020 be a quiet affair, each of us celebrating in our own homes and hoping that the Internet can handle all the Zoom calls?  The happy, sweet innocence of Christmas 2019 seems so much longer ago than a mere twelve months, and the tantalising promise of a safe, vaccinated celebration in 2021 seems too tenuous to trust at the moment.  Here we are – stuck in the middle.

Some things never change though.   This past week or so I’ve started seeing Facebook memes asserting that everyone must say “Merry Christmas” because any other greeting this time of year are fighting words.  This implies that Christians somehow own December, and I think to myself that this whole our-way-or-the-highway attitude is a most un-Christ-like way to treat our fellow men and women.

Did you know that December 25^th is a made up birthdate for the baby Jesus?  People in the Roman Empire picked that day to celebrate the Christ child’s birth almost 400 years after the fact, and not because they were making an educated guess about when it actually happened, but because all the pagan peoples they were trying to convert to their Christian beliefs already had a huge feast and festival at that time of year.  It was proving to be much easier to insert themselves into the pagan celebration than it was to try to banish it.  True story.

Bringing a tree into the house?  Decorating?  Feasting and gift giving?  Lighting candles?  Burning a Yule log?  All of these things were ways humans celebrated long before Christianity came along.  And what they were celebrating, you ask?  Why are there so many ‘competing’ holidays at this time of the year? 

The answer is something every civilization in the Northern Hemisphere has had in common since the dawn of time: the winter solstice.  Imagine living at a time when the daily loss of daylight was unexplained, when you had no supply of artificial light like we do today, when your very food sources – life itself - were directly tied to the sun and the seasons – would you not celebrate when the days began lengthening out again? 

The whole point of celebrating is to be joyous together about something special we believe in, even if our beliefs aren’t exactly the same.  And yet, here we are in the 21^st Century exerting exclusive privilege on a date and a season we borrowed from others.  It seems like a most un-Christ like thing to do.

It’s not the baby Jesus himself that is the ‘reason for the season’ but what his birth symbolized – the beginning of the New Testament ... forgiveness ... love of our fellow man.  Arguing over the proper response to seasonal greetings cheapens what should be Christianity’s most sacred duty – to love our neighbours as ourselves.

If we need something to say that conveys the real meaning of Christmas, let’s follow the angels’ lead and simply greet people with a smile and say “peace on earth!”

It works for everybody.