You know, I like Christmas and New Year’s because it means a break from work and classes as well as a chance to get out of the Haute and visit family. What I don’t like about this particular holiday season are the fundamentalist nuts who get pissy about people saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” The entire world isn’t Christian, and while I can understand their complaints that the Christmas holiday has become commercial, I can’t understand their insistence that everyone celebrate the holiday the same way they do. It’s not like everyone wants to celebrate Christmas, but since everything closes down and the holiday can’t be avoided, everyone is forced into at least taking the day off or doing something else for a while. Personally, I like days off which is why I also like Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Labor Day and Memorial Day… But just because the government mandates that I don’t go to work on those days doesn’t make me a Civil Rights leader, a part of a union, or a veteran. So just because I celebrate Christmas doesn’t make me a Christian nor should people mistake me as such and treat me badly if I don’t praise Jeebus (Ah, Homer.) as “the reason for the season.”

I have no problem with people wishing me “Happy Holidays” or even “Merry Christmas.” That’s the major holiday in December, period. If there’s anything to complain about, it’s the fact that my birthday is in December and 75% of the people I know will never remember it because of finals and Christmas in the same month. I feel sorry for Dad, Emily, and Ally for the same reason. My problem with the holiday is listening to the resident nuts who feel that, because we’re nearing one of their major holidays, they have to get on their lofty old soap boxes and preach about how terrible people who don’t celebrate Christmas as Christians are.

Case and point and also the catalyst for this post, one of our secretaries was ranting yesterday to anyone who’d listen (I’m stuck listening because she’s loud and just down the hall) about how she thinks it’s stupid that we don’t get more time off at Christmas or something (luckily, I missed the first part of the conversation because I was talking to Heather). She then went on about how we get Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Memorial Day off, and those days aren’t as important as Christmas. She insisted that we all need Christmas as a way of celebrating Jeebus, and other holidays aren’t as important and should be boycotted. Screw Columbus Day; it should be taken off the calendar. She also went on at great length about how Halloween should be boycotted because it’s just for Devil worshippers and heathens. I put my headphones on after that, having scrambled frantically to get Buster set up so I could watch Dracula movies rather than listen to her. If she feels that MLK Day and Memorial Day are worthless, days honoring those who have died to save her ass and the asses of her family and who have fought to protect her rights and the rights of everyone else, then so be it. I never said she wasn’t an ignorant person. She just has no idea what the hell she’s talking about.

The case and point of that comes from what she was saying this morning when I came in. She was going on about why Christmas is in December. I guess she has built up this argument in her head for quite some time to bash anyone who dares bring up that Jeebus was actually born in a totally different season based on historical evidence concerning the Roman censuses. She was talking about how no one should care if the date is wrong (which does make sense) because (and this is her logic which doesn’t make sense), no one was good at math back then and they were even worse at writing down dates and keeping track of events like this. It was prophesized that there would be a birth, and there was which is the important thing; they just weren’t good at keeping track of it and got the wrong date.

<Rubs temples and inhales deeply> Wrong! “Not good at math”?! Arabs practically invented all the math we know today hence all the Arabic words for mathematical terms like algebra (al-jabr where “al” is the Arabic word for “the”). Oh wait, that’s right: her Jeebus couldn’t have been an Arab or Black or a Jew. He was white with blond hair and blue eyes belonging to whatever sect she belongs to. As for not keeping track of dates or events, how does she think we know when the Roman censuses were two thousand and five years ago if they didn’t keep record of it? I suppose she’d say that those are fake documents and are part of some conspiracy against her church.

I guess what’s at the root of all my angst and annoyance at these ignorant comments is that they are ignorant. She’s never bothered to study her church beyond what her pastor tells her, and that makes her a sheep. People serious about understanding their church and its history and people who don’t want to be automatons eating anything that’s spoon-fed to them will go to the bother of trying to study it and learn about it. Christmas falls in December when it does for lots of possible reasons, none of them being because they were bad at math and record-keeping. Most of the reasons have to do with the assimilation of different peoples under one church, forcing them or coercing them away from their native religions. For example, Christmas falls on or very near the feast day of Mithras, a pagan god worshipped in the later days of the Roman Empire. It also falls near the Winter Solstice, a major religious holiday for Celtic tribes celebrating the rebirth of the sun. By putting the birth of Christ on or near the days when the native pagans were already celebrating, the Catholic Church could bring these peoples into the fold by saying, “See? We celebrate this day too. You can celebrate it with us; you just have to change the god you’re worshipping to ours.” The same goes for Easter, named after an Old English goddess who reigned over the spring. The bunny and egg were associated with her for their reproductivity and because of their other importance in the tribes. A large number of our Easter traditions come from this Old English background when the Church enveloped them, incorporating them into the system, letting them keep some of their old traditions and symbols so long as they also adopted the newer ones of the Church. The fact that our Easter is heavily influenced by these old Anglo-Saxon traditions is plainly evident in the fact that other Catholic countries of Europe don’t celebrate the holiday like this. There was no Easter Bunny in France until it came over from England. Instead, they hold a tradition that relies on the fact that the church bells aren’t rung during Lent. They say that the bells have gone to Rome to pray for the parishoners, and when they return (and are rung) on Easter morning, they bring back goodies and scatter them all over the churchyard. A bell hides the candy, not a bunny.

And even these associations most likely aren’t entirely accurate. Who knows why any religion does what it does? Most decisions are fairly arbitrary, others are obvious, and many are just plain common sense (like not stealing or killing people). Knowing the entire history of your religion may not make you believe more, it may not make you believe less, but at least it doesn’t make you sound like a fucking idiot or a disrespectful boob when dealing with people of other religions. If you understand the development of your own religion, all the trials and triumphs but especially the troubles, then you’re more likely to be more tolerant of other religions who have gone through the same processes. Of course, there’s still a flaw to this: while you may be more tolerant of your own religion and other people’s religions, that doesn’t leave much room for us Atheists. We’re just screwed. It’s easier for most to be tolerant of another relgion because at least they still believe in a higher power, more or less. It’s hard being tolerant of an Atheist who feels that “power” resides within a person, not in a god, especially if you’re feeling small and helpless and in need of a higher power to make you feel good about yourself. <Sigh>. Christmas really gets to me. It won’t get any easier in my lifetime, I’m sure. I guess I’ll just make do with what I can.

Oh, and no, I’m not taking “Christ” out of “Christmas” by abbreviating it like that in the title. “X” is the symbol for Christ through the Greek letter chi (X) of Christos or Christ. “Mas” just means “mass” or “feast” like in Candlemas (February 2 for the commemoration of the presentation of Christ the temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary) or Michaelmas (September 29 for St. Michael the Archangel). So to those who complain against writing “X-mas” as removing Christ from Christmas, shut up. It’ll never happen so long as the control over this country is still 75% Christian.