But I always took the, er, essential Christianity of "Christmas" for granted. That's precisely why we didn't celebrate it. Now, my parents, no fools, didn't try to convince my sister and I to forgo the childish pleasures in which our peers would be indulged, to wit, loot. So we exchanged gifts on the Winter Solstice. (Er, happy belated Solstice everybody!) But that was about it.
It never occurred to me that you could have Christmas without it being Christian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all that. I've been hip to the crass commercialism of Christmas in the US since I was about 4, I've known about it being a hijacking of older holidays since before I left grade school. But, thoughtful and serious tyke that I was, I always understood that Christmas as celebrated here in the US was a celebration of Christianity and Christianity's celebration. If it was crassly commercial, that merely reflected on the debased state of Christianity as popularly practiced, which caused me to feel sorry for Christians. So this was once some other religion(s)'s festivals; Christians have made it their own and I, for one, was not going to be in denial about it.
I took all this for granted, as obvious as the lengthening days, until the religious right took it upon themselves to point out all the ways in which not merely the Christian aspects of Christmas but the Christmas part of Christmas could be supplanted.
I had never dreamed in my most militant, fervent, restore-the-pledge, get-god-off-our-money, atheistic fantasies that Christmas might be truly secularized. It never crossed my mind.
But, credit where credit is due, the religious right has shown me what was before my eyes, yet I could not see. They have highlighted all the ways it is possible to capture the spirit and festivity of "the season" without invoking any particular religion. I had not realized there were so many, or that they were so thorough.
Indeed, in the ensuing firestorm has emerged a remarkable discussion of just what "the season" is, and what we're doing celebrating it. In a way which has reached me as no previous discussion of "the season" has, the ancestral roots of this festival, its essential cultural-independence, it nature of part of the human heritage of living on the northern hemisphere of this Earth, have been brought home to me. All the little ways in which non-Christians have been making a space for themselves in this season's observances, quietly insisting that Christians do not own the Solstice and that they, too, have a place at the banquet table, have been brought to light like the flaring of a thousand candles.
This season has a name in English: Yule. Different religions each may have their own rites and traditions, or not, for marking it, but it belongs to none. The evergreen is a symbol of the Yule that belongs to Christian and Jew, Muslim and Buddhist, Pagan and Atheist alike.
Religions teach many false things. One of them, which remains shockingly unquestioned in even atheist circles, is that you need a god or other supernatural entity to justify setting a time aside for a celebration and deeper contemplation. It is enough to do these things for their own sake, for the richness and beauty they bring to human life. To set aside a day as "holy" requires no imaginary beings; we sanctify it by a culture's choice to treat it as such.
Of course, individuals can keep their own private observances of their own private days. (I recommend it!) But that is something very different than a people observing a liminal time.
Holidays -- holy days -- are part of what knits a culture together as a culture. They unify by coordinating, in time, in space, and in mind-space.
America is a pluralistic society. In a nation built on the bedrock of allowing multiple and diverse religions, no intrinsically religious holiday can ever serve that unifying purpose because it necessarily excludes all non-believers.
Much has been made, especially on the right, about the failure of American cultural unity; many of their causes are attempts to defend or enforce a cultural unity (something the left often doesn't seem to understand or respect). Now, there are problems with promoting cultural unity -- it can calcify into repression. But there are also problems with lacking cultural unity. "Cultural unity" may sound, especially to many marginalized people, like "jackbooted thugs coming to hammer square pegs into round holes" -- which it can definitely mean. But it also means "feeling a connection with and solidarity with your fellow citizens".
The problem is that the right nigh-universally marries the concept of cultural unity to white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. As might be expected, a lot of non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon, and/or non-Protestants rather object to expectations to conform to that culture, and object even more strongly with the identification of that particular culture as "American", i.e. the American culture, instead of an American culture.
But does that mean there shouldn't be a the American culture -- an American Culture? Many on the left seem to think so. That is a difficult position to take, since, well, culture happens; if you don't like it, you are going to have to beat it back actively. But why should not America, like any nation, evolve its own traditions, as worthy of respect as any other people's? Why should not America be a people, not just a country?
This "War on Christmas", it seems to me, reveals how, hey, there's evidence of an emergent American Culture, one which is decidedly pluralistic, open to all peoples, regardless of religion or lack thereof, and which therefore freaks the right out no end. They thought they owned the idea of cultural unity, and here's this American holiday which has become unmoored from WASP culture.
Note, I'm not talking about merely pluralism, per se, here. I'm talking about a pluralistic holiday, which is a very interesting manefestation. We have other pluralistic holidays, of course, ones which are not tied to any religion or foreign culture -- the 4th of July, e.g. -- but none are as a culturally pertinent as Christmas, none involve the level of participation and prescribed activities and observances as Christmas.
If the religious right is correct, and Christmas is being -- or could be -- successfully secularized, that means some awesome things. If Americans manage to free Yule from its equations with Christmas, and make of the holiday their very own American thing, it would be the beginnings of a new American culture. By which I don't mean one culture of many in America, but rather an America-wide culture which is seen by Americans as The American Culture.
Is that a good thing? Now? Quite probably.
Cultures can fluctuate in their rigidity. (I'm not going to explain what I mean by rigidity of culture right now, or I'll be here all night. Maybe later.) When cultures become too rigid, and are experienced by too many members of the culture as too repressive, there is a backlash, and the resultant "heat" of conflict "melts" the culture, like crystalized rock being put under geological levels of heat and pressure. We Americans currently live in just just a fluidized culture, and much of what the religious right objects to is that liquidity; they look back on the days of a solid, crystalized, set culture with longing.
(Some on the right long for that solidity, per se; others long for the specifics. That is, some want the particular culture of the 1950s (or is it 1850s?) back; others don't care what the details of the culture are, just so long as it is no longer fluid.)
The problem with highly fluid cultures is that they are, well, not very strong. Highly crystalized cultures tend to brittleness, which highly fluid cultures tend to weakenss. Highly fluid cultures can't defend themselves against more solid cultures, which is one way of looking at why the Democrats keep getting their asses whupped. "Why don't they ever take a position?" I keep hearing people on the left lament; because they're swimming in a liquified sea and have nothing to put their feet down on.
Cultures which run like water cannot be built with or upon. No impression you make on them is persistant; they are memory-less.
Having melted down American culture to free those trapped within it, if we want to preserve any of the gains we have made in humanity and decency in our culture, we'd better find a way to make it set.
And, bizarrely enough, an unChristmas-ized American Yule would be a major step in that direction.
Nor, to be clear, am I talking about the erradication of Christmas. Quite to the contrary! Rather, it would be invited anew to the table, as one of the Yule holidays. Christmas would be seen as how Christians celebrate Yule, by feting the birth of their messiah; Channukah as how (well, American) Jews celebrate Yule, by commemorating a miracle at a military victory; Yule, the pagan sabbat, as how various neo-pagans celebrate the rebirth of the sun; etc.
I'm talking about a subtle yet profound shift in attitude which may well be on its way: that this is not a "holiday season" because many religions have their holidays in it, but because it is a "holy" season in our, American, culture, to which different faiths bring different observances.
Since one of the necessary part to an American Yule would be a popular body of American Yule-specific music distinct from Christmas music, I leave you with these curious lyrics for your contemplation:
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Tis the season to be jolly.
Don we now our gay apparel.
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol.
See the blazing Yule before us,
Strike the harp and join the chorus.
Follow me in merry measure,
While I tell of Yule tide treasure.
Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses.
Sing we joyous, all together,
Heedless of the wind and weather.