Chrismahanukwanzadan

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Happy holidays from a pluralistic world! Whenever I see the “Keep Christ in Christmas” signs that crop up this time of year, I think of the wonderful profusion of holidays that people from most faiths can share without being territorial about it. After all, the Pagans got there first—the Christian Christmas predates Jesus by centuries, it turns out. So when my daughter wished me a happy Chrismahanukwanzadan—from a mix of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan—I had to smile. Seems like some in the younger generation are really starting to get it. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but a holiday that celebrates people getting along is worth the effort. Being possessive of our holidays rings of hollow triumphalism—I feel happy because I have something that you don’t. Is this really the spirit of this secular season of giving wrapped in many confessional names? I’m sure shepherds and Magi didn’t exactly share a Weltanschuung.

Those who despair the lack of Christmas have not spent much time with history. As a cultural holiday the celebration of Christmas is younger than the United States, at least in this context. From the beginning Christmas was a pastiche of traditions from different religions celebrating aspects of Odin, Sol Invictus, Jesus, and Zarathustra, at the very least. Bringing these religious figures together into a season that represents the human need for light amid a dark and cold time of year, who would want to exclude others from their own holiday traditions? Having stood in the bleak fields of the Orkney Islands in a massive stone circle aligned to the winter solstice and constructed over a millennium before the birth of Christianity, I have to believe Christmas is one of the earliest expressions of human desire and certainly not limited to Christians.

What makes a holiday holy? Is it exclusive rights like those slapped on every movie you pop into the DVD player? The trademarking of an idea someone else thought of? Religions have a long history of forsaking the spirit of the law for the letter—its most familiar name is dogma. No matter who came up with the idea of doing what we can to bring a little light back into the dreary world around the time when night seems unending, it is a cause that any person of any religion, or none at all, can fully appreciate. Instead of marking territory, should not those who claim Christmas as their own be glad to share it with all? If the one who’s birth the church proclaims at this time of year in no way improves our outlook to others we might wonder if there should be cause to celebrate at all. My answer, such as it is, is Happy Chrismahanukwanzadan!

A holiday in anyone's book

A holiday in anyone’s book

Happy Whatever

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Over the past couple months I had been interviewing for a position at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in Manhattan. Although I did not get the position, I still recommend the center for those who are dealing with religious conflict. One of Tanenbaum’s concerns is the “December dilemma.” The month of December is dominated by the celebration of Christmas, and many people are barely hanging onto sanity awaiting those few days off near the end of the year to catch their breath before jumping back into all of it again. Yet, with the continual mixing of cultures and traditions that makes America such an interesting place, other traditions have difficulty competing with Christmas. Well, it is hard to compete with such a capitalistic holiday, one that is based around getting stuff.

There has been a movement afoot in recent years to mash the December holidays together. One such movement is the celebration of Chrismukkah, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Hanukkah naturally falls around the usual time of Christmas, and Kwanzaa was created to add yet more texture to the month. Despite all this, Christmas is still predominant. As I tell my students, the mindset of America as a whole (not demographic or even factual, but perceptual) continues to be Protestant Christian. Apart from Kennedy all of our presidents bear this out. And Protestants, although they don’t care much for the “mas”part, are big Christmas fans.

A Dickensian Christmas

A few years back I wrote a book for tweens that examined the roots and traditions of the major American holidays. (So far publishers haven’t been impressed.) One of the facts I learned about Christmas is that its celebration as a major holiday is a recent phenomenon. Before the nineteenth century Christmas was barely noted in America at all. In the wake of Charles Dickens and his influential stories, Christmas became an institution that celebrated family and home and goodwill. Eventually it grew into a major commercial holiday and everyone wanted to get in on the fun. Now we have a largely secular Christmas and other religions are eager to join in the non-confessional part of the holiday. Everyone would like to have Christmas day off work (except the clergy), and those who don’t have it feel lonely, I’m sure. I don’t see the reason for the big fuss about whose holiday it is. Christmas is symbolic of peace and togetherness, and no matter what it is called or who claims ownership, this is by far the superior path over religious fear and hatred.