Day # 38 Rumblings

"The children were nestled all snug in their beds, 
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads......


When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter."


The clatter, of course, turned out to be phalanxes of Christians arrayed against battalions of Atheists, all with their loins girded as if for war.  Ah, the annual Battle for Christmas, where grinchy fingers are pointed, holiday spirit and goodwill towards men (and women if you are one) are proudly supplanted by fanaticism and traditional names changed to protect, well, someone's dogma.  And without listening to the news, I can still hear the annual rumblings as sides are drawn once again.

While I come down firmly in the camp of secular humanism, at least from a political perspective, I love the winter holiday season, that which we collectively call Christmas, Chanukah, New Years, Kwanzaa, Solstice or whatever.  I get solidly down with the making merry, the eating of treats, the lights, communing with family, friends and reveling in the holidays and the passing of darkness to the days getting longer.  If other folks desire their holiday tradition to include railing against the holiday tradition of others, I have to say that I find that a bit contrary to the supposed spirit of the season.

So here are my purely personal observations on the Battle for Christmas.  And just to be fair, I am not going to start in on the folks you might think I would make note of first.

First, the History  The Holiday Season, whatever you choose to call it, has been around long before any of the Christians and Atheists starting battling over it.  The seasonal passing of the Winter Solstice was observed as an important event by peoples and tribes the world over.  The Holy Roman Catholic church, with infinite political savvy, simply co-opted the holiday from the Germanic pagans and re-branded it to give it legitimacy.  The church had learned that the pagans had a pesky way of adopting the teachings of the church that suited them whilst keeping their pagan traditions as well.  Since the Roman Clerics, specifically Pope Julius the First, knew politics at least as well as dogma, they shifted dogma to suit the political situation, thus bringing the pagan hordes under the umbrella of the Holy Mother church and, in the process, creating Christmas.  Between the fourth century and now lots of people have added to the legend of Christmas, with the "modern" Santa Claus image being most often accredited to Thomas Nast, a 19th century cartoonist who did a series of drawings for Harper's Weekly.  Thus we have Santa at the North Pole, the big list, the toy workshops, etc.
I fully acknowledge that this briefest of historical sketches leaves out big pieces of all of the influences that make up what we now call Christmas.  Do your own homework if you want to learn more.  Hint:  Santa's Reindeer?  They came from a Finnish tradition.

What I am saying is that this whole holiday thing is a cultural amalgam built over centuries.  If you think that your little group of dogma generators can lay sole claim to the holiday season, you got some 'splainin' to do.
So in that spirit of tolerance, let's get specific:

Hey Atheists!  Christmas has evolved into an almost entirely secular holiday for much of the population of North America.  With church attendance at new modern lows and many more people heading to the malls than to the hallowed halls of their churches or synagogues or mosques, organized religion is doing a fine job of dogmatically nailing its own coffin shut.  The cultural currents don't really require help in the form of protests to change the name of the "Christmas Tree" to the "Holiday Tree".  That sort of shenanigan is just the type of semantics that might lead people to think that Atheists don't have a sense of humour.  No municipality  in their right minds would put up a nativity scene so, while I know some of the Christians get a little testy around the holidays, show your depth of tolerance and intellectual integrity and lighten up.  If they want to believe, let 'em.  And hey, if you're lucky some of them will pray for your immortal souls, even it you don't have one.  I know, the serious right-wing Christian fanatics are a dangerous bunch of lunatics, but ease up on the struggle for a few weeks during the holidays.  Don't become the other side of the same coin.

Hey Christians!  First off, you guys have never "owned" Christmas in the first place.  Yeah, yeah, the name has "Christ" in it but that's because in the fourth century the Pope plagiarized a pre-existing holiday, in part because no one had any idea of what day the historical Jesus of Nazereth was born on.  Remember, at that point in history the Romans did not know the earth was round.  Check it out, its historical fact.  You don't even need to expend any faith to believe it.

So here is the deal, the Church swiped pagan sun god rituals and then renamed them.  That being the case, why don't we all try to stretch our boundaries a little bit, OK?  If you want to complain about such things as "Where is the line to see Jesus?" in response to people lining up to see Santa, then go stand in line to see Jesus.  Just don't berate the folks who want to take their kids to see Santa, many of whom are good church going folk.  I thought about what would happen if I dressed up as Jesus and sat, in public, waiting for people to line up to see me.  I'd probably get stoned.  No, I mean with rocks.  The kind that hurt.

And this separation of church and state thing that the founding fathers wrote into the US Constitution?  They did that for a reason, because they were smart fellows.  They knew the damage that organized religion had done in the past in England specifically and across Europe as a whole.  Based on their intimate knowledge of the tragedy that can occur when dogmas collide, they tried to keep religious dogma from having any part in the political process.  Deal with it, many of the Founding Fathers were Deists, not Evangelical Christians.

If your Christian beliefs require you to go to church on Christmas, enjoy!  But please, at the least in the spirit of the holidays if not in the spirit of Christian charity, don't hurt or berate other people because they choose to spend their holidays in some other fashion.

To My "Other" Brothers and Sisters!  I really, really do not want to seem exclusive of all of the many, many other beliefs and practices out there.  My wish for all of my fellow holiday merry makers, those who fall outside the two camps of "Christian" and "Atheist" is this:  Happy Holidays and sorry for the annual confusion.  Rock on with your families and friends and have fun.  Sorry about the "Other" thing, its just a bad joke.

My Holiday Wishes  So, I would wish that we could un-gird our collective loins, or at least use them to a higher holiday purpose than battling over holiday symbols.  I would wish that everyone has a merry holiday full of good cheer and some goodwill towards humans (critters too!).  I would wish that we could all, at least for this small piece of time, lighten up.  And of course I would wish everyone the appropriate holiday greeting which, for me, remains......

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night"